Interviewiewing the artist Jicol by www.fusionarts.ro 1.Tell us something about your background. I was born and grown up in Bucharest, Romania, in a period of dictatorship and deprivation of basic liberties and human dignity.I spent half of my childhood in the mountains (a wild untamed little lady & tomboy, with my grandparents, cousins and brother), close to the nature and the earth: fishing, hiking endlessly in the deep forest, horseback ridding, watching the stars at night, learning about plants and trees, animals, while caring for them on my grandparents lands; and half of the time in Bucharest ( when I was not in vacations in the mountains), roaming the halls, studios, backstages, technical rooms etc .of the Romanian television where my mother was working. Such a contrast of worlds! Both worlds incited me to deeply observe the nature & and nature of mankind. A curiosity and exaltation that never left me. These memories still feed my inspiration even today. It was fascinating. “Observing always observing ‘ … observing and expressing myself”…, as I wrote in the end of my official Artist Statement. 2. How have you developed your career? What jobs have you done other than being an artist? I always painted, since I remember. It was an almost obsessional, physical and psychological need; without it I felt panicked, unbalanced, lost. Starting with these times when I was sitting with my grandfather ( who was an < unknown> multi talented artist and by times inventor), paintings in silence in winter times while sipping on tisanes made with medicinal plants that he gathered and prepared himself. He knew, understood almost everything only by observing and studying the world and all that surrounds us : self thought. I consider myself very lucky that I could take from nature ( the pure source of life), a closer approach to what reality means. That which is non corrupted and deformed. It was luck but also in discordance with the social ‘truth’, th...