I’ve experienced the sacrifices one makes as an artist to have a workspace since childhood. My father is a painter, and I grew up in his studio, which we also shared. Out of the 2 apartment rooms of the building where we lived in Timisoara, one was supposed to be mine but became a studio due to financial constraints, so I basically shared a bedroom with my parents and played in the studio. It was fascinating. I remember building a little house out of detergent boxes there although the space was already cramped. As I grew up and needed more space, we moved near Timisoara, to Ghiroda, to my grandparents’ house which was still under construction. There, our work was not much appreciated by the rest of the family, but the space allowed it, so I ended up having my studio in an unfinished bathroom. Then we moved into the hallway, where me and my father would take turns at the easels, or I would paint in my room, where I would splash all the furniture and carpet.

College seemed like a dream, I didn’t go home anymore, I was able to work a lot because of the good lighting, nobody disturbed me, there was enough space, and it didn’t matter if I got the floor dirty, so I used to go home only late at night, taking the last bus. After my master’s degree I was given a space near my house from an aunt, so for a few years I worked there. Because I had that space, for which all I had to pay was the electricity, I wasn’t interested anymore in getting anything else. During that time, I started working with galleries, exhibiting and selling. That was my first real workshop, an unforgettable experience. It was there that I was able to develop fully, to grow, to experiment. To be on my own. It was quiet. One of the windows of the studio looked out onto our shared garden and it was a lovely view, I enjoyed sitting there, smoking, watching the garden transform with every season or day. I still remember the smell and sound of summer storms coming through the peeling paint window of my first studio. On summer days I would leave the door open and the swallows that nested on the eaves of the house would come in. They would sit on my paintings, and we would stay like that and stare at each other for a while. For 6 years, between 2013 and 2019 I worked in this studio, painting almost 5 quite large series. It wasn’t a studio for meetings, too few people came to visit. This was an intimate space where I worked a lot and where I appreciated the silence enormously. As I began to sell, I turned two large rooms in my house into a studio and storage space for my work. Since the summer of 2019 I have been able to move and start working in my new studio.

Then in 2020 I inherited the house and converted most of the annex into a studio. This is the space I still work in today. In the beginning it looked like an art gallery. Immaculate and very bright, as it has two big windows, one leading to the garden and one to the courtyard. A dream come true, with heating and air conditioning, but I couldn’t get comfortable. It took a while before I could overcome the obstacle of that pristine, sterile, brand new white. There are times l must cover the window facing the garden with a banner from one of my exhibitions, because the view steals my attention. When I work, I reach for what’s on the inside, the outside is blurring me even though I was initially inspired by it. If you don’t have discipline, the home studio can become anything but a studio. In my new space I enjoy the coolness of mornings and cups of coffee as I watch the garden ever-growing under the light of a new sunrise, as well as summer nights while working under spotlights, drenched in bright light amidst two dark windows through which the cold, silent night air enters. Unlike in my old studio, here I feel more exposed, I am both the observer and the observed. That’s why I think I work best at night when through the large windows I can barely make out the impenetrable darkness, it’s as if a whole universe is watching you.