ABOUT ME

I was born on March 16th, 1971, under the sign of Pisces, and I’ve always been determined, even as a child. When people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was always the same: I wanted to be a teacher. And I did become one, but only for six years. During that time, the children taught me how to rediscover my inner child—how to be free and how to paint. After graduating from a fashion design college in 1993, I felt a desire for something more, which led me to enroll at the Faculty of Fine Arts.

For two years, I learned little. Then, a change in teachers transformed everything. I learned how to laugh again and became captivated by the ideal, abstract patterns of things and events—their long, tall shapes reduced to a mysterious simplicity, always constant. In my work, I strive to maintain this connection between objects and their patterns, allowing me to observe and dream about the same reality. It’s a reality where silence and stillness are essential to finding a balance between oneself and the surrounding world.

I graduated in 2000 but was tempted to repeat a year because I was enjoying the process so much. After my son, Radu, was born, I entered a phase of accumulation, followed by a period of intense work. Then came my daughter, Maria, who deepened my passion for painting. For me, motherhood brought fulfillment and a new awareness of many things—and again, painting. Not even consistently, but always painting. I live within it.

Nora Blaj is an exploratory artist. With the help of colours, graphic signs, writing, and inserts of all kinds, she brings to the surface of her own works an interior geometry which is subjective, ontological. The equations of the images inside the frames seem to have a simple solution for the viewers. When you look at them, the answer seems to come naturally: ‘yes, I like them’.

However, the tasteful visual impact of Nora’s compositions is also due to their vital interior substance. Her works have a heart. She actually paints answers to humanity’s deep questions, and we instantly like them because we recognize many of these answers as our own. Right here, at your disposal, lies a journal that may seem impersonal (as abstract art appears to be, in most cases). But if we look closer, we discover the threads of a story written in the first person, a story of the self. A story about plunging into darkness and the light of life.

Nora brings the light to the surface, whether it is red, yellow, or orange, depending where her personal sun is: at sunrise, dusk, or noon. (Robert Șerban, Nora Blaj’s Personal Sun)

 

Nora Blaj is the lucid, temperamental type of artist. If there is something about her painting that convinces me, it has to be this eruptive energy of saturated chromatic densities, which exalts visual excitation all the way to paroxysm. But also the confessive-interrogative refluxes, a sign of sensory relaxation, which positions her in the abstract or conceptual areas of painting. (Corneliu Antim)