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"My name is Madalina Nicola, and it is my great privilege and honor to share my paintings with you, but even more important, is the opportunity to share with you the story as to how they came to be; what motivates me to create them, what I see and feel while painting them, and after, when they are completed, what I hope you will derive from experiencing them and owning them.

Throughout my entire childhood and young adult life, I was very seriously ill, and was unable to communicate my thoughts and my feelings in words. What saved me from depression and loneliness was that I was blessed with the ability to derive great spiritual strength and emotional healing from the conception, creation and appreciation of fine art, and to communicate with the world through my paintings.

As a tiny girl, I would crawl out of my sick bed, which would drain me both physically and emotionally, sit on a small stool, and paint small canvases. Even then, despite my youth and naivete, I knew, instinctively, that my thoughts and my visions were much bigger than that, and I dreamt of a day when my paintings would be as large and rich as the hopes and dreams that inspired them.

I only had access to a very limited palette of colors as a child. I needed many, many more to capture the pure, rich, warm reds of parental and Divine love; the cool, elegant blues of the skies and the water, and their peace and calm; the rich, deep, ambers, bronzes and coppers of nature at her most luxurious; and the bright happiness of sunshine yellows and golds. When I finally acquired those paints as an adult, I felt like a composer who had just discovered new notes, or an author who had just discovered new words. They brought new life and new meaning to my paintings.

The concepts for my paintings would come to me as just a single word or phrase or image from above, that would then inspire both the painting's title and its theme. I would then feel an unstoppable, passionate urge to take that inspiration, internalize it, allow it to course throughout my mind, my body and soul, until It manifested itself as a vision of an exquisite painting; perfect in line and balance, color and texture, and capture that feeling of exhilaration on canvas for all to see and to enjoy.
For those who looked and saw and felt the same intense emotion and passion that I felt while creating my paintings, I was able to establish a level of communication that greatly transcended what any words could ever possibly say.

My earliest paintings were pure, abstract emotions on canvas, but something was missing. I felt an intense need to step into them and proclaim them as my own; to say "I am in here, this is me, this is my story that I need to share." But, how best to capture and show that? Finally, after much deep thought and consideration, I decided to take a long, cold walk to awaken my senses, searching for inspiration; suddenly, a strong icy wind picked up from nowhere. I started to shiver. The leaves and branches of the large, majestic oaks shook menacingly, and the trees threatened to uproot and fall. I was afraid.

In the midst of this chaos, one small thin tree that had lost all of its leaves, was swaying back and forth in the wind, its strength lying in its flexibility; thin but not fragile, resilient and hopeful, which was both its beauty and its potential for survival. Here was my symbol, my icon. It withstood the harsh winds of fall and the icy cold of winter and yet remained standing because of its ability to bend with the winds and still come back upright to flourish and blossom in the spring. It represents new beginnings, things about to happen; this is also my life story.

The combination of Divine inspiration, the need to communicate, to heal and to be healed, the passion to create, the God-given talent and energy to work tirelessly, totally submerged in the process, the adventure, the challenge, and then finally the euphoria of completion; all of that and more is embodied in each of my paintings.

It is my sincerest hope that we have been able to make a connection; that you and I have shared a special moment; that the miracle of my physical and spiritual healing through art will inspire you to welcome one of my paintings into your home, to share with your family and friends, and bask in the glow of their remarkable healing properties.

I love each and every one of them. They are my babies. Nothing gives me greater happiness than seeing them find a warm and wonderful new home where they will tell their story over and over again about overcoming adversity and bring you and your family hope and courage and renewed faith every day.

Today, I am pain free. I live in a world without limits, where my hopes and dreams have become reality. I am truly blessed to be able to share these miracles with you."

I loved to paint for as far as I can remember; ever since, painting has been a great part of my life. To me, it is a fantasy world in which I surround myself in my quest for freedom and inner peace; a beautiful world without limits where hopes and dreams become reality.
I get inspired by powerful emotions, which I see as virtual paintings in my mind. Once I see them, I can visualize them again if I want to, as if they were a previous memory.

I then feel the uncontrollable urge to capture these visualizations on canvas.

First, I need to discover which colors I need to use in my new painting. They always tend to be colors that I have to invent by mixing various colors from the jar. I always study the result on a blank canvas for the right hue, transparency and intensity.

Once I like the result, I use it to create my background.

The next step in my process is usually building up layers upon layers of glazes. For that, I sometimes I use the same color, sometimes layers of different colors.

I always like to study the transparency and opacity of new colors, the intensity of glazes that I could use and if and how they can be combined in harmony. I am always fascinated by the complexity and beauty of this process.

Some paintings require rich texture. I use for that gel medium, paste or gesso, depending on the desired outcome. I usually add sand to the mixture before it dries out. Once dry, I build layers of glazed as if with all other projects.

It is on canvas that I merge together color, glazing and texture to create the illusion of translucency and immateriality.

The whole process comes natural to me. I always trust my instincts and I don’t feel the need to “think” my next step. I always feel I am in total control of the process, without any inhibitions or fears. I lose the sense of time, as I feel totally submerged in the process. I never feel afraid to make mistakes and I feel no inhibitions as I paint.

On occasion, I feel that the intensity of an area of the painting does not match my visualization. I erase that part and redo it, making sure it integrates harmoniously into the composition.

I love painting on large canvases. I feel it is completely liberating, giving me the feeling of complete freedom.

I always listen to music when I paint. I use classical music, as well as contemporary mood music. I feel it gives me inner peace and harmony.

Once I start a new work, I usually get excited and I can’t rest until I finish it. I work until I am exhausted, late at night, only to wake up next day and start over again. This passion seems to get worse as I approach the final stages; I feel more and more euphoric as I can’t wait to give birth to my new work.

I love to work on several ideas at the same time. As a layer of color or glaze dries out on a canvas in one studio, I go to the other studio and start working on another idea.

I started to look at painting as spiritual strength and emotional healing at a time of great physical illness. When illness took away from me the ability to communicate, painting helped me express what I have found too hard to say in words; it gave me a way to make an escape from sadness, yet at the same time a way for me to prove myself how strong I am. It is the illness however, from which I learned a higher sense of spirituality, patience, and commitment and to never give up fighting for my dreams. This is why my paintings are not about sorrow and pain, but about hope, courage and a strong belief in miracles.

Today I feel very blessed for being healthy; painting continues to heal my soul, to be a way of expressing my deepest feelings and sharing them with others. It is a message to never lose hope in the continued search for happiness.

I feel compelled to paint as a result of an inner need to express myself. I feel an unstoppable passionate urge to capture on canvas my visualization as filtered through my emotions and feelings. I feel, in return, I receive freedom, happiness and joy. I feel fascinated by the whole process and I perceive every paining as a new adventure and challenge.

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