Full biography
I was born in a village in Moldova, in a world that had no time for dreamers. There, men were raised to endure, not to feel. To work, not to dream. But I... I saw the world differently. I saw shadows moving, outlines vibrating, colours telling stories. I felt the need to draw, to express myself, to create.
To my father, everything I did was nonsense.
He did not allow me to come close to art. Whenever he caught me with a pencil, a sheet of paper, a sketch, he punished me. Without mercy. With his hand, with his belt, with a grapevine cane. He told me that drawing was for the weak. That we would not live off nonsense. He tore up my notebooks, crushed my dreams – but he could not extinguish the flame inside me.
One day remains deeply etched within me: I was a child and stole a few lei from home to buy an eraser and coloured pencils. When he found out, he “corrected” me. That was what he called it. He beat me with a long grapevine cane until my body went numb. But something within me grew stronger: I knew that a dream that hurts deserves to be lived.
I attended the Children’s Art School in the Ștefan Vodă district between 1995 and 2000. Years when I took refuge in art, in the quiet of the brush, in the silent confidence of my teachers. And at graduation, I experienced a sacred moment: the great soprano Maria Bieșu presented me with my diploma. When I stood before her, I felt – without thinking – that I had to kiss her hand. I was the first to do so. She smiled, left her hand in mine, and in that gesture I felt seen for the first time. Accepted.
In 2001 I wanted to apply to the Faculty of Arts in Romania. But I had no money, connections or support. I was rejected. And then I fell silent again. I shut away my dream and took up hard labour. I became a bricklayer and stove builder. I built stoves, fireplaces and barbecues. I sculpted brick with the same passion with which I had once drawn. My work was respected. But it consumed me.
In 2009, I began to feel that something was wrong. An illness lay silent inside me for years, until, in 2020, everything gave way. I was admitted to hospital in Germany, where I underwent two difficult operations that changed my life. Serious intestinal problems. After the operations, the doctors permanently forbade me from doing physical work.
And then, with my body weakened but my soul on the threshold of rebirth, I picked up the brush again.
But it was not only illness that crushed me. In 2013, the woman I loved, my wife, died. We had been together for four years. She was the only one who loved me for who I am. She died in my arms. And with her, a part of me was gone.
The years that followed were full of wandering and being lost. Italy. England. Germany. I tried to survive. But my real life only began in 2022, when, after the operations, I sat down in front of a blank canvas for the first time in years.
Since then, I paint daily. Not for glory. But for healing. For truth. For myself.
Every work is a wound transformed into colour. Every brush is a confession. I paint the child who was beaten for dreaming. The man who broke his body through work. The husband who lost his love. The person who fell and got back up.
In March 2024, just twelve days before my birthday, my father died. We did not get the chance to reconcile. But I no longer felt hatred either. Only peace. In his final years, I had already forgiven him. Because I understood him. He, too, had been a prisoner of a world that had not taught him to be gentle.
Today I no longer carry fear. I no longer seek approval. I am a painter.
And when I stand before the canvas, with hands that know what pain is and a soul that has learned what love is, I feel... like a Da Vinci, a Nicolae Grigorescu of my world, of my wounds, of my rebirth.
And no one can take that away from me.