Artist Cristina Marian

Cristina Marian is a Romanian-American visual artist whose work explores themes such as her experience within her community, togetherness and the sense of belonging, communal and global changes, and finding peace within unpredictability.

As a child, Marian lived between two vastly divergent political regimes and witnessed the violent Romanian Revolution of 1989. Then, at age 13, she moved by herself from a small village in the Romanian countryside to a city of two million people to follow her dream of studying art. Around the same time, Marian lost her childhood home to a fire. Still, she completed her studies, established her career as an artist, and later immigrated to the U.S. These experiences contributed to the feeling of permanent transition, which strongly influences her artwork.

Marian holds a BFA in Painting from the National University of Fine Arts in Bucharest, Romania, and an MFA from Montana State University, Bozeman.

She works with various mediums, including painting, sculpture, and public installation. She has exhibited internationally, including in Bucharest, Paris, Oslo, Dakar, and Vienna. In America, Marian’s work has been shown throughout Montana, in Cincinnati, OH and in Spokane, WA. Her most recent group show was Private Space at Manifest Gallery in Ohio. Nowhere To Be But Here is her most recent solo exhibition at the Holter Museum of Art in Helena, Montana. She divides her time between working in the studio, exhibiting her artwork, teaching, and spending time with her one-year-old baby and husband.

"Experiential in nature and a response to life's complexities, my work combines images, conversations, feelings and memories into visual narratives or abstract imagery simultaneously exploring ideas of the familiar and the mysterious. With a personal but also fundamental and universal character, themes such as time, space, home, the sense of place and belonging, community, transitional moments and identity appear in my work. My experience as an immigrant in Montana for the past twelve years has radically changed my life and art practice. Here I gradually developed a sense of place, belonging and purpose. This community now stands in place of my family. Through not only traumatic experiences but also the happiest moments of my life, I found both myself and the professional path I needed to take. My most recent work is about perception, absence, presence, and developing a new sense of orientation when challenges appear. I began work on this new collection of paintings eight months after giving birth to a baby girl and having recently moved with my family to a small rural town in Montana. I looked back at my first months as a mother. As I grappled with my new body, surroundings, and profound personal changes, I found that the key to redefining myself was viewing my experiences from a different perspective. In those months, when wilderness was not easily accessible to me, the act of imagining walks in nature became an energizing inspiration for navigating my new life. During the course of this journey, my paintings developed gradually into poetic landscapes built from memory, imagination, and layers of paint. Ambiguous versus sharp, defined elements; opposing forces where plant-like forms promise growth while tangled tree branches hinder my path; dense textural areas versus airy expansive surfaces all combining to symbolize an evolving connection to my environment."

Tell us a little about yourself (where you are from) and your background in the arts.

I grew up in Ungureni, Albestii de Arges, a village at the base of the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. I lived a childhood surrounded by mountains, rivers, farms, gardens, a large family, plus neighbors and children of all ages. We had no access to a computer, and in communist times, this meant a TV with one channel, broadcasting only two hours per day. I spent most of my time outside in the hills, the gardens and playing with other children or the farm animals we had. There, I learned to observe and engage with the natural world and people.

What kind of work are you currently making?

For the last two or three years, my focus has been solely on painting work that reveals a push and pull between abstraction and representation, ambiguous/blurred elements versus sharp/defined ones. It is work about what I observe, imagine, feel, and live.

For me, life has been greatly fragmented and has become the sum of fixed points and thresholds as I pass between them. My painting mirrors all of these transitions, the in-between space in which boundaries are replaced by new possibilities.

I am currently in the research stage, gathering documentation in preparation for an upcoming show in September at Studio Break Gallery in Chicago with Ann Blaas. I am also testing materials and ideas for making an artist book based on the painting "I Will Be Silent" and the concept behind my most recent solo exhibition, "Nowhere To Be But Here", at the Holter Museum of Art in Helena, MT.

What is a day like in the studio for you?

After spending my morning with my husband and our 22-month-old baby, I arrive at the studio around 10 a.m. My best studio day is one following a long walk or hike we’ve taken somewhere around Whitehall. I come back inspired and often return carrying rocks, tangled branches, wood that looks like a bird, bones, wasps’ nests, etc.

When I arrive at the studio, I first decide the music I’ll listen to, based on my work for the day. If I’m in the stage of preparing for or starting new paintings, I might choose audiobooks or interviews/podcasts with artists. If I’m partially through my paintings and need deep focus, I’ll listen to music like Jordi Savall, Avishai Cohen, Keith Jarrett, or Paco de Lucia or have silent studio time. Also, I spend about 30 minutes or more looking at/or reading about art online. Seeing art on a screen is not my preferred way to do it, but sometimes, it is the only possibility when living in rural areas of Montana, far from museums and art galleries.

After having baby Maria, I’ve felt a sense of immediacy, pushing me to work faster and not allowing me the time to overthink what I’m doing. I only have six studio hours per work day, much less than I had before her, so I need to be deeply engaged, use the hours wisely, and respond to each moment.

My least favorite studio day is when I need to respond to emails, send applications, or do other things that leave only one or two hours of painting. I find it hard to separate these jobs by day, so I do a little bit, each studio day.

What are you looking at right now and/or reading?

This is the season of motherhood for me. Besides reading books with baby Maria like "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" or "A Bear, a Bee, and a Honey Tree", I am currently reading "Giuseppe Penone: The Hidden Life Within" by Matthew Teitelbaum, and listening to Penone speak about his work. I am deeply inspired by his poetic vision of the relationship between nature and humans, the idea of Interconnectedness, and how he explores and follows different materials. I relate to the way he engages the material, following its lead. This is a process I'm also using in paintings; the materials inform discovery.

My family and I recently moved to Whitehall, MT. Living in such a small place and growing alongside our baby slows me down. I may not have easy access to art galleries, museums, or a rich cultural life, but I'm spending consistent time in the wilderness, and I enjoy looking at its constant changes. This place offers me a more intimate relationship with nature and a large space for contemplation and self-reflection. It's a very special place, very different from what I've experienced before, and it's easy to get lost in. I can't think of anything else while I'm there; it takes effort to form thoughts. Writing this made me think of Rebecca Solnit's quote: "To be lost is to be fully present."

Where can we find more of your work? (ex. website/insta/gallery/upcoming shows)

Website: https://www.cristinamarian.com/

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/cristinamarianart/