Painting as a Way of Structuring Inner Life
Marilena Zahiu stands among the contemporary voices in Romanian painting who approach the canvas not simply as a surface for depiction, but as a space where inner experience takes visual form. Based in Romania, she works primarily in painting, using it as a means to organize perception, emotion, and memory into a coherent yet open visual language. Her practice is rooted in the belief that painting can articulate what daily language often fails to express, especially those subtle emotional states that exist between people, within nature, or in moments of quiet reflection. Rather than seeking overt narratives, Zahiu focuses on atmosphere and presence, allowing each work to communicate through tone, rhythm, and color. This approach situates her work within a broader contemporary concern for introspection and psychological depth, while maintaining a personal sensitivity that resists easy categorization. From the outset, her work invites viewers into a space of attentiveness, where looking becomes a slow and reflective act shaped by nuance rather than immediacy.
Her background plays a defining role in shaping this sensibility. Zahiu completed her Bachelor’s degree in Painting at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, followed by a Master’s degree in Creative Strategies in Painting at the same institution. This academic foundation provided her with technical rigor, conceptual clarity, and a disciplined approach to the medium, while also encouraging openness toward experimentation and personal inquiry. Since 2017, she has been a member of the Romanian Plastic Artists Union, a professional affiliation that situates her practice within the national artistic landscape while allowing space for individual development. These formative experiences contributed to her understanding of painting not only as an image-making practice, but as an ongoing process of questioning and refinement. The balance between structure and freedom that defines her education continues to inform the way she approaches each new work, reinforcing a dialogue between learned discipline and intuitive response.
Within her studio, painting functions as both a method of exploration and a form of self-observation. Zahiu describes this space as one of continuous testing, where materials, techniques, and ideas are placed in conversation with evolving states of mind. The act of painting becomes inseparable from personal discovery, with the process holding as much importance as the completed canvas. This emphasis on becoming rather than resolving allows her work to retain a sense of openness, where traces of decision, hesitation, and transformation remain visible. Over time, this approach has shaped a practice that prioritizes sensitivity over spectacle and depth over immediacy. By maintaining a strong connection between lived experience and visual expression, Zahiu establishes painting as a vital tool for understanding both the self and the surrounding world, creating works that resonate through their quiet yet persistent emotional charge.
Marilena Zahiu: Between Discipline and Experimentation
Zahiu’s path toward becoming an artist emerged from a fundamental need to give form to what often remains unspoken. Painting offered her a way to engage with emotions, tensions, fragilities, and moments of calm that define everyday existence yet rarely find clear articulation. From her earliest works, this impulse toward understanding through visual means has remained constant, evolving alongside her technical and conceptual growth. Today, her style is defined by a careful attention to atmosphere and to the internal rhythm that governs each image. Rather than imposing a fixed outcome, she allows the painting to develop gradually, responding to shifts in mood, material behavior, and compositional balance. This method results in works that feel lived in, carrying the traces of their own formation and resisting finality. The viewer encounters not a static statement, but a moment suspended within an ongoing process of reflection.
Central to her practice is the tension between control and chance. Zahiu works through layers of acrylic paint, alternating between transparency and density to build surfaces that appear to breathe. These layered constructions create a visual tempo, where areas of restraint coexist with passages shaped by accident and intuition. Color functions not as a descriptive tool, but as a carrier of emotional resonance, shifting the psychological weight of the image with subtle variations. By allowing accidents to play a role in the process, she acknowledges uncertainty as a productive force rather than an obstacle. This openness encourages unexpected relationships between forms and hues, reinforcing the sense that each painting possesses its own internal logic. Over time, this balance has become a defining characteristic of her work, aligning technical precision with emotional responsiveness in a way that feels both intentional and organic.
The themes that run through Zahiu’s paintings revolve around the relationship between interior and exterior experience. Questions of identity, presence, and self-awareness emerge through gestures, spatial ambiguity, and chromatic tension. Her work often asks who we are beneath visible surfaces and how lived experience leaves traces that shape expression and posture. Instead of offering clear answers, she creates space for the viewer to enter the image with personal associations and emotional memory. This openness is deliberate, reflecting her belief that painting can function as a shared psychological space rather than a closed narrative. By resisting explicit explanation, Zahiu allows meaning to remain fluid, encouraging sustained engagement and introspection. In this way, her practice aligns personal inquiry with collective resonance, transforming individual emotion into a visual language that remains accessible yet deeply layered.
Influences, Atmosphere, and the Psychology of Color
Life itself stands as Zahiu’s primary source of influence. She draws inspiration from the way light interacts with surfaces, the shifting rhythms of nature, and the emotional residue left by encounters, absences, and periods of transition. These observations do not translate directly into imagery, but instead inform the mood and energy that permeate her work. She is particularly attentive to the contrast between beauty and unease, a dynamic that keeps an image alive and prevents it from settling into complacency. This sensitivity allows her paintings to hover between attraction and discomfort, inviting prolonged contemplation. Rather than depicting specific scenes, she distills experience into atmosphere, using color and form to suggest states of being that feel familiar yet difficult to name. This approach underscores her commitment to painting as a medium capable of holding emotional complexity without reducing it to illustration.
Artistically, Zahiu is drawn to painters and traditions that engage deeply with emotion, light, and the inner space created by color. Whether working within echoes of classical landscape or moving toward a more abstract language, she remains interested in how painting can operate as a psychological place. In her work, color often functions as a threshold rather than a boundary, guiding perception while leaving room for ambiguity. This focus aligns with her interest in how viewers experience a painting emotionally before understanding it intellectually. The surface becomes a site of encounter, where feeling precedes interpretation. By prioritizing this order of experience, Zahiu situates her work within a lineage that values sensory and emotional engagement, while maintaining a contemporary awareness of subjectivity and perception.
Her handling of paint reinforces these concerns. Visible marks, layered passages, and shifts in texture emphasize the presence of the artist’s hand, reminding the viewer that each work is the result of sustained attention and response. Backgrounds often function as emotional fields rather than descriptive spaces, intensifying the relationship between figure, color, and silence. This restraint in spatial definition heightens the psychological focus of the image, drawing attention to posture, gaze, and absence. Emotion in Zahiu’s work is rarely theatrical; instead, it manifests as quiet intensity, a charged stillness that invites reflection. Through this measured approach, she creates paintings that resist quick consumption, encouraging viewers to slow down and engage with the subtle emotional climates embedded within each composition.
Marilena Zahiu: Reflection, Maturation, and Ongoing Inquiry
Among Zahiu’s works, the painting Reflexio holds particular significance. Measuring 100 by 100 centimeters and executed in acrylic on canvas, it forms part of the series associated with her solo exhibition REFLEXIO. In this work, reflection is approached not merely as a visual phenomenon, but as a conceptual framework. The painting explores how individuals perceive themselves through the world around them, through nature, and through their relationships with others. Zahiu sought to capture a fragile moment of internal shift, when clarity begins to emerge while mystery remains intact. Built through layered passages of transparency and density, the surface suggests a living presence, as if the image itself were inhaling and exhaling. This balance between revelation and uncertainty embodies her broader concerns with introspection and emotional transition.
Reflexio represents a point of maturation within her practice, marking an affirmation of her visual language and her ability to communicate emotion without explicit explanation. The painting relies on color and composition to convey feeling, allowing meaning to arise through perception rather than narrative. This confidence reflects years of sustained inquiry into how painting can hold complex inner states without resolving them. The work demonstrates her commitment to allowing images to exist as spaces of experience, where viewers are invited to sense rather than decode. By trusting the viewer’s emotional intelligence, Zahiu reinforces her belief in painting as a shared yet deeply personal encounter. This approach not only defines the significance of Reflexio, but also signals a broader direction within her evolving body of work.
Her daily working rhythm supports this ongoing exploration. Zahiu approaches the studio as a site of dialogue, moving between observation, note-taking, return, and testing. Sometimes she begins with sketches or fragments, while other times she works directly on the canvas, allowing the process to guide decisions. Continuity and attentiveness remain central, especially toward unexpected developments that arise during painting. Looking ahead, she aims to further expand the direction initiated with REFLEXIO, developing a larger body of work focused on reflection, interiority, and the capacity of images to hold both quiet and tension. Alongside this conceptual growth, she remains committed to exhibiting internationally and building coherent projects in which each painting contributes to a larger, interconnected narrative.
