Some artists begin with a feeling, a memory, a fragment of a dream. For Geanina M. Zaharia, art has always been closely connected to her entire inner world — a place where imagination, emotion and observation meet and gradually take shape on paper.

Her artistic journey began long before she entered university. As a young artist, Geanina was already participating in local and national art competitions, receiving awards and gradually developing a visual language of her own. Later, she studied Graphic Art at the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design of the “George Enescu” National University of Arts in Iași, followed by a master's programme in Graphic Art and 3D Animation.

But her education did not simply teach her how to create images. It helped her understand how important it is for an artist to develop a personal voice.

“I think that art means reinterpreting, modifying, transforming and, if you are lucky, innovating,” she once said. “There is no point in faithfully imitating the work of other artists. You have to create your own art.” That idea seems to have remained at the heart of her artistic practice.

A world built slowly, detail by detail

There is something particularly intimate about Geanina's way of working. Her compositions have always required patience. In her traditional works, she could spend hours drawing, refining, adding and reconsidering details, allowing the image to develop gradually rather than forcing it into existence.

I had the chance to see this process from very close by. We were roommates during our university years, and I often watched her work over several days. A drawing would slowly emerge in stages, sometimes remaining unfinished for a while before she returned to it again. What seemed at first to be only a collection of lines and details would eventually become a complete world. This patience is still visible in her art today.

Geanina's early work moved through pencil, pen and watercolor, often combining intricate compositions with a vivid imagination. Her images seemed to exist somewhere between observation and fantasy, reality and an imagined world. Later, her studies in 3D animation opened another dimension of that universe. During her master's studies, she created an animated fairy-tale sequence entirely by herself, both conceptually and practically.

The transition from traditional graphic art to digital creation therefore came naturally. The medium changed, but the essential element remained the same: imagination.

From traditional drawing to digital art — and back to the human face

Over the years, Geanina has explored illustration, animation, portraits, art compositions, logos and personalized visual projects. Today, however, one particular form has become especially important in her artistic practice: the realistic graphite portrait.

On her People & Paintings profile, she describes herself as an artist inspired by “beauty and natural details” and speaks about her fascination with the human face, its shadows, different shades of grey and expressions.

There is a certain contradiction — and perhaps precisely because of that, a particular beauty — in choosing graphite, one of the most restrained artistic mediums, after having explored colourful and imaginative worlds. Yet the pencil gives her something essential: subtlety.

A face can be transformed by a small change in the eyes, the direction of a shadow or the texture of the hair. In Geanina's portraits, these details become the language through which personality is suggested. “I enjoy the harmony of pencil on paper and all the textures and forms that are created,” she explains.

Her recent works include portraits of people from different worlds, from actors and public figures to anonymous faces. Regardless of the subject, the focus remains on expression — on that moment when a technically accurate drawing begins to feel like the presence of a real person.

Art as a way of living

For Geanina, art has never been simply a profession. It has been present throughout her life, not necessarily as something separate from everyday existence, but as a way of seeing it. She once described art as “a choice, a lifestyle” and, even more deeply, as a necessity — a way for the spirit to survive both beautiful moments and difficult ones.

This belief helps explain the personal quality of her work. Even when she is drawing someone else's face, something of the artist herself remains present in the process: her patience, sensitivity, fascination with detail and attraction to beauty.

Perhaps this is why her artistic journey has never been limited to one medium or one direction. The pencil, the digital tablet, animation, illustration and portraiture are different tools, but they all serve the same purpose — giving form to something that first exists in the imagination.

The artist as curator

There is another important side to Geanina's creative identity: she is also an exhibition curator.

Her interest in art does not end with her own work. She is equally interested in discovering other artists, understanding their visual worlds and creating opportunities for different artistic voices to meet.

As she describes it, she wants to “promote all talented artists of all ages and styles to bring beauty to the world.”

This dual role — artist and curator — gives her a particularly interesting perspective. She knows what it means to stand behind an artwork and reveal something personal through it, but she also knows what it means to look at many different works and search for connections, contrasts and meanings between them.

In recent years, she has already curated exhibitions for People & Paintings Gallery, becoming part of the gallery's international curatorial programme.

A meeting point between two artistic journeys

There is something especially meaningful about Geanina's current connection with People & Paintings Gallery.

This week, the gallery is presenting a selection of her artworks, offering viewers the opportunity to discover her work as an artist — particularly her graphite portraits and her highly detailed approach to the human face.

At the same time, beginning Monday, September 7, Geanina will return to the gallery in another role: as curator of “Landscape Through My Eyes,” the 43rd Juried Art Exhibition, which will run until September 18, 2026.

It is a fitting continuation of her artistic story: during one moment, she invites us into her own world; in the next, she opens a space for other artists to show us how they see theirs.

Maybe that is what makes Geanina's journey particularly compelling. Whether she is holding a pencil, building an imaginary world digitally, studying a face or selecting artworks for an exhibition, she continues to do essentially the same thing — to look closely, to imagine, and to transform what she sees into something that can be shared with others.

And somewhere between the first line and the finished image, that private world becomes art.

 

by Cosmina Marcela Oltean

 

Image - collage of Geanina's works (The Wizard / Digital Self portrait / Autumn)