Daniel Chiriac

(Romania)

SP: HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN SURREALISM?
DANIEL:
To be fair, I'm not a truly surrealist artist! My "first love" is abstract art. And when I say" first", it means really first. I remember the first museum visited when I was 5 or 6 and how much I was impressed by abstract pieces! Well, you can say that abstract is surrealism too. Many people would say that Miro's art, for example, is abstract rather than surrealism. It depends on your point of view.
So from three years ago to today, I have been painting in the style generally recognized by the majority as being surrealism. I arrived at this kind of surrealism because I was fatigued and bored by the abstract style.
When I'm working on a painting I love the final surrealist work only for a few days. After that I become impatient because I hate the process of painting it! I hate the fact that I can't paint fast enough to not lose that fever of a new idea! When I used to paint abstract it was a joy to do it and the final satisfaction wasn't as big as the expectations each time . . . don't mention the waste of colors which are so expensive!
I don't know if I'll work surreal forever, but it's certain that I'll make at least small breaks to other styles.
Another reason I like abstract and surreal painting is because I love enigmas. I love that the "stories" of my compositions are revealed slowly.

SP: WHAT MEDIUMS YOU PRESENTLY WORK IN?
DANIEL: I usually work traditionally in oil on linen and sometimes canvas, at least when I work surrealist. I work in many mediums and methods in abstract style.

SP: WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?
DANIEL: I just started a surreal composition which I think will be purchased by a director from Boston (Ma). I started a small Venetian masks series and he missed the last which he wanted to buy. Generally, I avoid series! I rapidly become bored, even if the subject is almost a guaranteed sale!



SP: DESCRIBE YOUR CREATIVE/PAINTING PROCESS
DANIEL: As I said above, I hate the process of painting surrealism. By that I mean the process itself of putting the paint on canvas (Oh ,those little details, those many details! it kills me!). But I love to make sketches when I have ideas.
Sometimes I have too many, sometimes none. The ideas just come. At times, in a middle of a chat with my wife, sometimes during dinner or in dream. It isn't rare when I wake in the middle of the night to make a quick sketch! For me, that is the most important part of creation, the idea! After that I'm unhappy that there isn't an invention where a brain can be connected to a printer. Not one of my paintings is not as I "saw" it in my mind. The rest is technique . . . that can be learned by oneself or helped by teachers.



SP: DO YOU EXPERIENCE ARTISTS' BLOCK AND IF SO HOW DO YOU OVERCOME IT?
DANIEL: Oh! Of course! Certainly! Where is the artist who doesn't experienced this!? When that happens and the block isn't from fatigue, I take out my many old sketches which are not transposed into a final work, and I have many! I look at the sketches, and while looking through them, suddenly, some new ideas come. It is a very, very rare case when I use sketches older then 2 months. Another way to overcome artists block, for me, is to do nothing or play stupid PC games like the FPS (first person shooting) games are :), which is really the same as doing nothing.
Trying another style by making a break from my current style has also worked for me in the past.

SP: WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL HISTORY WITH ART?
DANIEL: Well "the history" is short! I always have been IN art since childhood . I wasn't a "contest wining" child/teen/man . . . I was silent. I started to be "in business" just since 1999 and I'm 34 years old. When I was 18 and it was time to choose which college I'd attend, I thought to myself, "I want money !" Big money! How can I do it? Hum? Painting? Making art? NOOO !!!! So I choose to be a lawyer :-(
I spent the most wonderful years of life trying to become that thing - a lawyer. I hardly managed to finish college, but I NEVER professed to be a lawyer or connected with it. I finished Law Study only to finish it . . to have the diploma :-)
The art call was too present in my soul and I choose to embrace the path of art assuming the risks. That's it, but during that time I had some lessons with some teachers .

SP: WHAT ARTISTS HAVE INFLUENCED YOU AND HOW?
DANIEL: J. Pollock (especially) and Karel Appel . . . hmm . . . J. Miro in abstract style. In my early surrealistic works Escher and Magritte. Now there are many, but no one in particular from the surreal side. Although it isn't obvious, Caravaggio influenced me a lot in my surrealistic compositions.


SP: HOW HAVE YOU HANDLED THE BUSINESS SIDE OF BEING AN ARTIST?
DANIEL: Hmm . . . in the past, let's say it wasn't so good for me as a represented artist. The only good thing was that I could experiment a lot without risks . Now I'm self represented and I do it all by myself.
Even my website is self designed and managed . Being a freelancer is a bit harder, but I have much more satisfaction. On the other hand it is very hard, nearly impossible to rise above the vast mass of good artists without an agent. Yet if I were discovered by a good agent with many connections who knows. Maybe tomorrow I'll sell one print for the amount of one present original :-)

SP: WHAT OTHER INTERESTS DO YOU HAVE OUTSIDE OF PAINTING?
DANIEL: Linux is my other "world " . I'm captivated by the open source/free software current and trying to help. I'm proud to be nominated in the list of "Thanks to" in an open source software ( FET - timetables generator http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet). Then PC hardware things . . . I love to know all about it.

SP: WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO AN ARTIST STARTING OUT?
DANIEL: Be confident, but realistic! And it is good to know: every painting has at least one admirer (aside from you, family and friends).

SP: HAVE YOU HAD A RECENT SHOW OR ONE UPCOMING?
DANIEL: Unfortunately, none recently. Upcoming? I have a promise for next year. As usual , it's hard for me to keep paintings for futures shows. I live from selling my art, so I need to sell not long after a painting has dried.

SP: WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE QUESTION THAT YOU ARE ASKED AS AN ARTIST?
DANIEL: "Will you accept my offer for this painting?" I really don't like to be questioned about my art. But I can tell you that the most annoying question is " What did you want to represent in this painting?" Well I'm a painter, not an writer. If I were a writer, I'd transform my ideas in a novel, not a painting.

Daniel's website
contact Daniel

Stumble It!