| Home | Portfolio | About Me | Order |
 Hello, I am Nicusor Dumitru. I was born in a small village near Bucharest, in Romania. Is in a plain region, with green fields, a great river and lots of forests to sparkle the imagination. I remember spending all my free time in the wilderness, with just a little notebook, a pencil, an eraser and a small knife. That was the life!!! Looking for insects to draw, strange trees and observing how the wind is playing with the lights in the forest. And every twice a week I was going to study painting in Bucharest. I started to paint around 3 years old, I am told that I was drawing imaginary animals, not to different then what I do now! My first painting teacher was miss Petcu, and she learned me for first time how to use colors, how to draw what I see around me. Later on I have moved to Bucharest. I was 10 years old. I started to hate the city, not that before of that I was loving it. Life was a routine. Was hard. A little kid, stranger in a big city, leaving among strangers, fighting with prejudice, trying to find by himself what is good and what is bad. To many changes for that age. I was dreaming to my green plains. I entered the most important Art School from Bucharest, “Nicolae Tonitza”. If on a personal plan I didn't liked that period, on the professional plan I really started to learn what art is, things like color theory, perspective, how you compose a scene, how to use light and shadow. The things our teacher, the painter Dumitriu, teach me in the that period are the one on which I base my work even today. He used to make our learning both meaningful and a game. So I must thank him here. He was the one that really started the transformation of a country boy in what I am today. He showed me what can I become. Also I discovered the museums of Bucharest, and my love for zoology and history. I was spending entire days drawing different animal in the Museum of Natural History, or different medieval weapons in the Military History. At 14 years old, maybe feeling I need to learn even more new things, I choose to study sculpture. I really enjoyed being in a sculpture class. We weren't many, but what a good team we were. Eight student and one teacher, the great artist Cubasa. In the final year we had our art studio at the semi-basement of the school building, with light coming from the top of the wall, creating a perfect atmosphere of gloom and imagination. That place was a place of creation. We really felt that way. Stone chips and dust were mixed with our perspiration in the days we stayed long our even after the school was over to work a little more to that stubborn stone that didn't wanted to release the captive form from within. It was of period in which I've meet my best friends. It was the time I have started to love the city. This are the years of my life I like remembering most of all. It was a period of intense creation, of enlightenment. I have added astronomy to may passions, making from the skies a place of dreams. I was sleeping nights imagining how it will be walking on the surfaces of those worlds. At the end of this period come the single thing i hate most in my life: a decision with confusing results. I had to follow a law school. Was then when my father burned some hundreds of my drawings, that I was keeping since I was child. Maybe that explains why even today I don't keep a large portfolio around me, and I am overly protective with my work. That's why I show or give the best works I create only after a long time since I create them. I didn't even protested against going to a law school, though I was feeling that is not what I want.  I was a very confused youngster and my father had a very powerful personality, very persuasive. And 16 years old is a very impressionable age. He convinced me that the law school is what is best for me. I decided to go with that, and after graduating the High School I entered a local University, specializing in International Law after 4 years that for me are a blur now. Like my mind is trying to forget that period entirely. Still I remember that in college years I liked learning all those laws. All artistic purpose was over for me. I lost years of experience. It was the darkest time in my life. And for no purpose. But in the year I was finishing the college my father died. Until then he was the one that helped and supported me, some bad decisions, but still he was my power. Without him the purpose of being law man was gone. Is true, I have a bachelor degree in international law. But I didn't want to do that for all my life. I had other dreams now. If weren't for my wife I don't know if I could go over this hard time. I emerged form the college with a broken will, sad, depressed. I think meeting her was the luckiest thing that happened to me. I was in my last year of college. She was and is my soul healer. At her insistence I started to paint again. Painfully slow and with not so many clients. But at least I had the satisfaction of doing something I loved: creating art. For me creation is the most important thing. Using my imagination and skills to bring to reality things never seen. Means are really not so important. Though I prefer visual arts, I am also enjoying writing and doing game design. Finally the clients appeared. A sense of satisfaction started to grow in me. Today I can't see me doing something else than this. In a period of ten years I've sold more than 1000 traditional paintings, mostly Byzantine Icons. But until the clients come I worked for the German firm “Wetzel” doing metal engraving and then art crafting, musical boxes, jewel boxes, antiques reconditioning, for the antiquities firm “Martel”. I have attended many computer classes in this period and I've learned to master the PC. I hate when I can not use a tool for all that it can offer. So I have studied and finally I arrived of being able to use almost any computer program. The computer become my friend. This gives me many means of creation, and that is what it counts for me. I am writing and painting using the computer as much I use canvas this days. My wife was also the one that pushed me in the Sci-Fi Literature Society of Bucharest “Planetar”, for which I am grateful, since I met some great friends there, peoples that shared my interest for imagination. They liked my fantasy and sci-fi drawings!! Well that was a change, since before all peoples appreciated mostly my traditional work. And was the thing that kept me doing concept art. Then they were really interested in games, like me, both board ones and computer games, many of them being programmers and game designers. My friend Felix was the first one that teach me web design. In this period I also started to study game design. There I was working, for a short period, in making a fanzine for “Planetar”, named “Universalia”. Finally i decided to go again to University, this time to do something I wanted, College of Philosophy and Journalism of the University “Spiru Haret”, of which student still am. In this college I have the possibility to study in more detail some of my latest passions, like philosophy, religion, mythology and logic.  In the last three years I've lived in the United States, in South Carolina in a small town near Charleston, then in Georgia near Savannah, with an intermezzo of six months in the summer of 2008, back in Romania. This six months without my wife were a nightmare for both of us and now that we are back together again is like a rebirth. I don't remember being more scared and frustrated in my entire life. Frustrated by the unending bureaucracy and disappointed by the human nature. But time apart form the ones you love makes one think to important things in life. So it was for me and it has changed some of my priorities. The last years in USA are again a period of mixed feelings. On a side I miss all my friends, my family from back home, on the other side it opens to me new possibilities, though remote since at this moment I am not allowed to work in USA. But living in USA was not without any professional satisfaction. For a brief while I've been part of the great team that is doing “Might and Magic Tribute” PC game, though in the end I had to give up since I am now working with some of my friends from Romania to create my own game. In 2007 I was part of the Charleston Art Guild and had my work exposed in their gallery. Then in 2008 I was presenting my art at the Farmers Market in Charleston and in the spring of that year I've succeeded to enter the Picollo Spaleto festival from Charleston. Also I had my my paintings exposed in other galleries from Charleston and Savannah. In rest I am working very hard to improve my skills, dream about imaginary worlds, have fun with my friends and enjoy every moment I have with my wife. |
| Contact | My Other Stuff | Links |