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Rodica
Miller
I was born and raised in Bucharest, Romania where
I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in Painting
from the Academy of Fine Arts ‘ Nicolae Grigorescu’.
In 1996, I moved to the United States where I earned an Associates
degree in Applied Science, specializing in Textile/ Surface
Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University
of New York, New York, in 2002. In spite of all the difficulties
and complications, I managed to have my own website and began
promoting my art through the Internet in 2003.
Painting is part of myself, a spectacular ordeal with so few
satisfactions, regardless, nothing is more wonderful than
the time spent in the studio, when you isolate yourself from
the daily turmoil and, with an eagerness comparable to that
of before a competition, you start working. It is a unique
moment, when fatigue and loneliness- which crushed you like
a fatality, devouring you without haste- disappears...at last
the painting is ready and speaks...Around you, there is silence.
Everything has its own meaning, and exhausted by the achieved
flight, you feel like the chronicler of the time, who recorded
the results of these experiences to leave them to those who
will follow the same path...
My painting has been strongly influenced by the metaphysical
surrealist painters Giorgio De Chirico “ the poet of
emptiness” and Rene Magritte through his philosophical
investigation and impossible settings. As for my painting
technique, I feel comfortable with oil on canvas and the black
backgrounds always represent Time and Outer Space for my soliloquies.
Welcome to my world!
“ Like the merging flow of joined dreams, the neo- surrealistic
realms explored in the visual meditations of Rodica Alecsandra
Petrescu angle into subterranean corners of the psyche. Frozen
in states of becoming, they seem to taunt the meaning of actualization.”
A quote from; Irving G. Alexander- ‘ New Art International’,
Book Art Press, Publishers, NY, 1999.
It
happened many years ago, but I still remember the time when
I read "How Wang-Fo Was Saved" by Marguerite Yourcenar.
I was so captivated by the old master, Wang-Fo- and
his Disciple- that I remained quite pensive for a
couple of days.
The descriptions were so vivid taking
me straight into the story, witnessing all their
struggles and happenings, visualizing
all those beautiful paintings and colors.
My admiration for that master
and his philosophy about life was flaming up my imagination
from one paragraph to the next.
There was so much love in the
writer's words, so much beauty and perfection, so that the
story will be in my heart and mind forever.
All of those wonderful hues and tones of color that the master
used
to discover- even from the ordinary,
or odd surroundings- were like
precious painting lessons to me. But the
way he chose to live his daily,
earthly life, in a total improvisation, owning nothing
and living nowhere,
depriving himself of any kind
of comfort, were rising up the alarming
question "Why?"
But, now, after experiencing all the trials
and tribulations as an artist and woman, I have the answer
and the meaning of the story.
Like master Wang-Fo, I had to
leave my properties, even my books
which made it harder. A couple of times, I had
to change directions and to
make incredible painful decisions for myself- and for
others- and I had
to learn how to be happy with just what I have: my painting.
Everything come and gone so
unexpectedly, bringing joy or tears, terrible storms
or commotions, but my painting stayed with me as my
only true and loyal friend...
It has never deceived or betrayed me. On the contrary,
it has always offered me challenges with myself or with others.
Like master Wang-Fo, I found
myself inspired in ordinary common places, and I painted
and wrote in unusual surroundings, whenever my spirit was
capable to receive the Enlighten.
Like a little bird that is
content with just a drop of water, I 'flew' further and further
following my bliss and my dreams....
Nevertheless, God has something to
do with all these, and I am grateful for
His magnificent gift, which is Painting, and for
this fast paced adventurous journey, which is my life...
Artist
Confession
I wish I could paint with the alertness
of thought:
The hot wave of our meeting from that unique spring,
The dream world of childhood carried on cloud wings,
The song of the sea,
The dangerous charm of remote places,
The Grail,
The cold and pure air of the flight over blue mountains,
The venom of lies and the poison of the betrayals,
The pearled tones of the soul in the morning of life and the
sadness of its sunset,
The labyrinth of Uncertainty,
The shape of Ideal,
The unseen attraction force of Evil,
The tearing desert of waiting,
The color of suffering,
The fragile-delicate face of Hope,
The terrible moment of Renunciation.
Rodica Alecsandra
All
this follows the subtle trajectories and accomplished decantations,
of shape and color from the interior labyrinth. Rodica Petrescu
prefers the realms- much more fascinating- of dream anatomy,
where all human emotions gain maximum intensity and the sublimated
expression of the! meaning of life and man’s predestination.
Through this effort of visualizing the ineffable, it becomes
a feat of extreme individualization of the creator’s
intention. But, it also becomes an answer to the eternally
questioning and probing natural human spirit. That is the
reason for which the artist resorts to a series of means,
belonging to the endless surrealist arsenal (via the Magritte
route), without obeying the aesthetic codes of this current.
Apparently, the artist focuses upon the gothic mythology the
same that fascinated the generations of the last great romantics
as they bathed in the vice of Wagnerian sonorities. Rodica’s
“Graal” claims itself as an insatiable hunger
for purity and superlativity- but not through intangible projections-
birthing of ceaseless sagas of heroes, that alternate between
mystical devotion pushed until ultimate sacrifice and painful
wandering.
The painter retains from this marvelous universe the visual
suggestions, which in the a! rtist’s vision assume a
sum of primordial elements. A world of the mineral, in incandescent,
metamorphic transpositions, evokes a time of origins and essences.
Rodica’s
painting is above all, the utter obliteration of certain prejudices.
Despite the cultural preciousness that it rightfully assigns
to itself, this painting captures a certain fraction of the
cold and offensive sensibility of today’s world, not
below the avidity of the puritan nostalgia of the first Christians,
or the Crusaders. New religions find foundations in the rediscovery
of the primordial creeds. The initiating itinerary towards
acquiring the Grail becomes the poem that lights the horizon
spanned by human hopes from the inside. The conquering fires
of a ˜ Parsiphal” or a ˜ Mystical Kaballah”
of ˜ The Eaters of Illusions” embarked on an ˜
Underground Journey” are very much alive in each one
of us. Such fascinating titles populate the design of the
exhibition at Goethe Institute, where Rodica Petrescu performs
to convert plastically the realms of the unseen, where only
essences and dreams and ideal and embodiment are lasting.
Here she is today succeeding to convince us that
there still exists an eminently objective painting based on
abstract contents.
A
truly delightful exhibition of ingenuity and tension in plastic
thought, attained solely through the spiritual refinement
of discourse and through the chromatic density that is displayed
in the contents of these pictorial essays. Rodica Petrescu’s
painting is much more than this; it is a form of the aspiration
to purity.
Corneliu Antim, The Shape of the Ideal, “Luceafarul“,
January 27, 1993
Born and raised in Bucharest, Romania, Rodica has moved to
the United States and settled down upstate New York since
1996.
She has a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree in Painting from The
Academy of Fine Arts ‘Nicolae Grigorescu’, Bucharest,
Romania, and an Associate in Applied Science degree in Textile/Surface
Design from State University of New York State , Fashion Institute
of Technology, New York, NY.
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