Self-portrait with ballerina in the garden pavilion.

I am a sculptor, a painter and an art enthusiast. My Credo is: art must have a message that reflects the beauty of things, not beautiful things, otherwise, it's easy to make art when you have nothing to say. The sculpture, before detaching it from the raw form of stone, marble or wood, grinds in my mind for a long time, in solitude. In my sculpture, marble, as matter, is revived, reinvented through art, after destruction. I collect marble waste from the marble industry, including from the builders of funerary monuments and make sculptures by direct carving with traditional tools: chisels, drills, abrasives, etc. that I use manually. The same happens with wood, I select the best wood from the one intended for burning to heat the houses, I dry it, I protect it from insects and degradation and I make sculptures by direct carving. I sculpt on all sides in the "Ronde-bosse" system because it can be seen all around. I am one of those sculptors who insist on making art in the traditional way, but without rejecting contemporary trends. In some of my sculptures I take the narrative context of some legends from the civilization of ancient Greece and place them in different contexts, suggesting movement in metamorphosis, to create completely new meanings and evoke completely different emotions, a way of seeing again in the era modern. The materials in which I sculpt are diverse: stone, marble, wood and stainless steel. In sculpture, I aim to produce the sensation of the real and to create images that are on the border between true and unreal, exploring that fine connection between authentic and artificial. I like direct sculpture, taking advantage of the routine of my childhood in a small village (Ciuta in Romania) where next to my father I carved large stone crosses for sale, which I sculpted nasty angels, so I learned the craft of direct sculpture. The stone carving technique was brought to the village by two Italian stonemasons who came and founded their families 200 years ago. In the area there is a generous deposit of white-yellow limestone from which the Outdoor Sculpture Camp from Magura was created. I made the leap from the craft of direct stone carving to artistic representation from a meeting, during my childhood, with the Romanian sculptor George Apostu, whom I saw carving in the yard of a house in Ciuta some strange shapes that did not resemble those products of village stonemasons (funerary monuments). I've been looking for the answer for the rest of my life ever since. I trained through artistic courses, I studied the phenomenon of contemporary visual art, I read a lot, I visited museums and art galleries in Europe and New York.