I know I present my work in a rather atypical manner. Instead of placing it against a classic — but to me, sterile — white background, I wander through my garden and look for tiny micro-worlds for each piece to step into.

Sometimes, beauty dominates the scene. Other times, the space offers me a spark — an unexpected layer of meaning I hadn’t yet seen. This exercise has brought more gifts than I imagined.

Seeing Differently

First of all, it’s taught me to see differently. My garden — which my mind usually perceives as a whole, like the way the noun “garden” works as an umbrella — suddenly fills with its millions of details: the bugs, the plants, the different types of soil. Even the light changes from moment to moment, day to day, season to season.

It pulls me into presence. I begin to notice what was always there, and appreciate it more deeply.

We do this instinctively as humans when we feel exceptionally alive — in a new place, eating something that goes straight to the heart, or when we fall in love. This process feels like that. Not always at first — I won’t lie and say I’m always inspired. Sometimes, I dread finding another “good spot.” But then I do. And something shifts.

My brain starts seeing it, my body gets slightly tingly… and I feel like I’m creating something I can only describe as magic. I want to share what I see. I want to write. Even if I don’t write or publish immediately, the moment captured in the photos will bring me back even months later. Time capsules. Relics of some sort.

When the Work Unlocks Itself

Often, a new layer of the work reveals itself only once I see it in its new environment. How it sits in the world becomes a part of the experience. Seeing it in the world, how it interacts with its environment is a pleasure in and of itself.

As an artist, your first and biggest masterpiece is your life. From that life, an idea is born. One retreats — often into a studio, a limited space — to translate that idea into form, to get it “out.” Once the idea is materialised, it immediately starts being internalised again, either slowly or all at once.

Creative work keeps evolving, even after it’s “finished.” Maybe forever — because the eyes that behold it keep changing too.

So the cycle looks like this:

• External (world, experience)
• Internal (idea, emotion)
• External (artwork, object)
• Internal again (interpretation, reflection)

That’s only part of the loop. Traditionally, the next step is exhibition: the piece enters the world, and others begin their own internal process of experiencing it.

The artist, through the act of presenting, through responses, through the subtle, invisible shift that happens when something once-private is released.

These photos — the way I present my work online — are my personal moment of externalisation. In a way, it happens three times:
First, by carefully curating where I place them (and noticing what happens);
Second, by capturing them in photographs;
And third, by publishing them online.

Why This Place Matters

Context matters. This place — this garden, this farm in the countryside, in the middle of nowhere in Romania — is where these works were made. It’s where I poured my heart into them, as cliché as it may sound.

It’s also where I took my first practical steps into the life of an artist.

Here is where I lived, enjoyed, suffered, created — and where a chapter began that has already changed the course of my entire life. I came to reconnect with my roots, with myself, and with life in its deepest forms. This land gave me courage to pursue. It gave me peace. It gave me space.

All the chapters before this haven’t disappeared — they’ve been integrated. They show up in new shapes and textures. They are still present in the present. I see them in my photographs, in my work.

My Own Little Garden of Eden

Yes, it’s a bit of romantic prose — but no less true.

These photographs are more than presentation. They’re glimpses into the world behind the work. The place it was born in.

Exactly two years ago, I packed my bags and moved to this semi-abandoned farmhouse — built and expanded over generations by my ancestors. Something called me towards it. I wanted to live where they had lived. And I wanted to expand its soul, the way it had expanded mine in the past. And as if by perfect timing, the atelier I needed also found its place here.

But this isn’t the first Garden of Eden to exist on this land — only the latest version.

As a child, I spent entire summers here with my grandparents. They were still in great shape back then. My grandmother, tireless, filled the house with meals for family and field workers alike. Three laundry baskets done before noon. That kind of thing. My grandfather — I can still see him months before he passed, leaping into his big orange tractor, half-standing, yelling something out the door. Probably a joke. Or a sarcastic remark.

A New Season

This is simply a new season.

One that celebrates its history — through me, through the art. One that holds the past gently while opening to what’s next.

I’m excited to see what other places and worlds the future offers.
This feels like both an ending and a beginning. A deep rooting.
A place to return to. A home.

But there are more gardens I want to discover.
I can’t wait to share them with you as well.