Laura Covaci
Bucharest, Romania
Raised in a family of poets, painters and actors in Romania, Laura Covaci absorbed tales of rebellion and risk from an early age. Trained in mural art in the 1980s, she first made a name with large-scale, eerie landscapes before embracing a digital practice she calls “painting in pixels.” Her work blends fine drawing, collage, photo manipulation and 3D modeling, conjuring nymphs, drones and toy‑like figures in lush, baroque settings.
Unafraid to mix past and future, she finds emotion in technology and delights in both unsettling and enchanting her audience. Covaci’s fearless experimentation has earned her a place among the Top 100 Romanian artists.
Artist Interview
Q: Your work explores profound themes of humanity, time, and historical cycles. Can you share how your background influences these philosophical undertones in your art?
A: I grew up in Romania, in the closed-off space of the so-called “golden age” - the age of a dictator; paradoxically, however, thanks to the circle of artists who often gathered in my parents’ house, I could easily escape in the boundlessness of poetry - and not only poetry. Derealisation is a necessary process for survival and the levels of it are endless. It is there where I found the refuge and the instruments with which I remodelled the desperations of the proletariat, which I then compiled in an initial series called “Proletarian Surrealism” (the 80s).
Q: You’ve been described as fearless in your work, never standing still and always embracing risk. What motivates you to continually push boundaries in your art, and how do you navigate the challenges that come with such bold experimentation?
A: Creation, true creation, cancels out fear. I am always treading on the edge of a chasm. How else could I shed light into the abyss? Nowadays I am standing on the edge of a digital abyss, looking to fill these unearthly, empty spaces, as Eugen Ionesco called them, with “the water of life”.
Q: Your pieces are deeply layered with symbolism and narrative. How do you decide which symbols or elements to include, and what role does intuition play in your process?