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Issue link: https://digital.miamilivingmagazine.com/i/1543371
Miami Living (ML): You come from a remarkably creative family and began your own artistic journey at a very young age. How does your background – both your early life in Romania and your family’s artistic legacy – shape the way you live and create today? I grew up among extraordinarily successful creative people – my uncle Toma Caragiu was a legendary actor of both film and theatre, my mother Matilda Caragiu was a Member of the Romanian Academy, authored 19 books, had a weekly TV show on language and a weekly column in the Romanian equivalent of the New Yorker, among many other achievements. My aunt Geta Caragiu was a brilliant sculptor whose work is in museums all over Europe. I grew up fast among them, as if life was pushing me forth from the earliest age. I was speaking perfectly at age 2, read at age 3, finished Mark Twain’s novels at age 4, wrote poetry and prose (some published in literary magazines) and started painting seriously at 8. My aunt enrolled me in private classes with a renowned figurative expressionist painter between ages 8 and 14, and she also spent a lot of time with me in her sculpture studio, teaching me how to figure draw and sculpt. To this day there is a bust of me on a marble pedestal in our family garden in Bucharest that I made under her exacting supervision (and help) when I was 10. When I turned 6, she gifted me three shelves of books on the lives and oeuvre of the most important artists of all time, which I devoured. I won two national art prizes at ages 14 and 15, one was for a work on glass and the other for an oil on paper. Geta was beyond disappointed when I chose to become an actress, following in my uncle Toma’s path. For nearly three years she snuck me in as a guest student into figure drawing and painting classes at the Fine Arts College where she was a professor, so I was able to pursue my passion for art as well as my acting studies and graduated with an MA. I had finished high school at 17 — we were on an accelerated track that worked wonders for gifted students. I wish we had that here. It is an amazing, beautiful challenge — yes, you have classes nonstop, including Saturdays, but you are able to become versed in more than one art, step into your future faster, and be extraordinarily prolific. Not to mention the built-in work ethic. That is a trend that has defined my life. I am a relentless omni-creative and would not have it any other way. ML: Your figures are instantly recognizable: elongated, luminous, and almost otherworldly. Where did the inspiration for this distinctive visual language come from, and how did it evolve into such a defining part of your work? I have conceived hundreds of fashion covers for the magazine I created in 2002, The Daily Front Row. IMG was my backer and they had the most powerful modeling agency in the world, one floor up from my offices. I had the unique opportunity to meet the most glorious models of our time from the very start of their careers, and they became my muses. Their beauty in that moment in time when they were in their teens, nature’s purest work of art, was indeed otherworldly. It’s as if a light shone on them as they glided in slow motion through the air around them, mesmerizing everyone in their path. Then and there, I decided that portraits are what I will do for the rest of my life.