The Magical Imagination of Mária Moldován

The Magical Imagination of Mária Moldován - theHumm March 2020

By Sally Hansen

Art… and Soul

The mere mention of Transylvania anywhere in the Anglosphere immediately conjures up the occult adventures of Dracula. Having never met anyone from Transylvania before, your intrepid arts reporter was both mesmerized and intimidated by my utter lack of knowledge of the background of this month’s featured artist from Arnprior.

Mária Moldován’s astonishing art is as unfamiliar as her background — and just as fascinating. This accomplished and multi-talented artist weaves her magical imagination throughout her paintings, her sculptures and her children’s book illustrations. Her flights of fancy lift my spirit and invite me to climb on board. Immersing myself in her phantasmagorical world, I realize it’s like reading fantasy literature — best enjoyed with a willing suspension of disbelief.

Mária’s creatures and characters and objects populate a world of striking originality, unhampered by convention or probability. Birds and fish and people and buildings and feet and plants occupy the same territory. It is up to the viewer to invent her own story for each work of art. It is also rewarding to just “feast your eyes” and wonder what in (or out of) the world inspired each piece. When I can’t resist asking, Mária replies: “Everyone asks me, ‘Where do the images come from?’; it’s like asking me ‘Why are you breathing?’!”

Her work is breathtakingly original, and superbly executed. She is inspired by Chagall and Gauguin, both of whom broke with tradition to follow their own muses. Otherworldly, supernatural touches in her paintings and sculptures remind me of Chagall’s works. Like his, Moldován’s works resonate with a deep, intrinsic appreciation of music and culture. Like Gauguin, she believes that the input of memory, imagination and emotion results in more meaningful forms. Somehow she channels childlike innocence while weaving intricate images into enigmatic works that invite endless contemplation.

When I comment on her frequent application of feet to normally inanimate objects in her paintings and on her sculptures, she confides that it is a holdover from her youth. “When you are a child you believe in animism — children think everything is alive.” Moldován’s art is deliciously, wondrously childlike and alive.

The Journey

Her big dilemma was deciding which art form she would embrace. Mária grew up in a household replete with art and music and saturated with artistic sensibility. Her mother was a poet, “giving us so much beauty and joy — she read The Little Prince to us when I was four.” Her father also instilled in her his love for music, for books and culture; he used to drive to Budapest to buy her David Attenborough’s nature books. Mária originally wanted to be a field scientist, but there was no guide in her universe, no one to model a career after. The same was true of her innate passion for dance; she simply had no recipe for how to pursue a career as a dancer, and she couldn’t imagine how to earn a living as a poet.

According to Moldován, Romania “is hugely art-friendly.” There is great support for the arts, and while attending the High School of Arts in her hometown of Sfântu Gheorghe, she would frequently work at her studies and painting from 7am to 6pm. After four years of painting, she fell in love with ceramic art at the University of Arts and Design in Cluj-Napoca, where she met and then married her husband and kindred spirit, George.

Mária’s family is Hungarian from the Transylvania region of Romania. George’s father is Romanian, as is his surname. As a child Mária was happily oblivious to ethnic politics, but describes her adulthood as “growing up in the dark box of communism — in an ‘I want to escape’ mentality where everyone dreamt of opening up the door and ending the struggle to make ends meet.” George’s hometown was Târgu Mures. Since the fall of the communist regime in December 1989, the city has been an important cultural and political center for the Hungarian minority in Transylvania. In March of 1990 it became the site of bloody clashes between the Romanian and Hungarian ethnic groups.

Eventually Mária and George emigrated to Ontario in 2013 with their two-year-old son Mátyás and their nine-year-old dachshund to seek a better life. The transition was difficult, and they returned to Romania for another year so their parents could get to know their grandson. In 2015 the family came back to Ottawa and Mária applied at the Ottawa School of Art where she soon became a ceramics teacher. After falling in love with Almonte during the Puppets Up Festival, the couple started looking for a home in the Valley and found a house in Arnprior that enables Mária to pursue all three of her artistic loves. In one end of the second floor she paints; in the middle she creates her unique handbuilt ceramic art, and on the other end she has a high-tech workshop in which she creates her delightfully whimsical illustrations for children’s books published in Romania and Hungary. Mátyás is also learning how to create illustrations on the computer when he isn’t studying one of his three languages or playing his guitar.

April 4 and 5: The Ten Collective

Mária Moldován is delighted to participate as the invited guest of The Ten Collective in their third annual show. “Art is solitary; mostly I work in isolation. I’m excited to be part of a painting event. I understand myself better through conversation and feedback with other artists and viewers. It is fascinating to hear what people read out of my art and to learn what it makes them feel.” The all-painting event will be held in the historic Mississippi Valley Textile Museum, located in the annex of the former Rosamond Woolen Company in Almonte constructed in 1867. Details are available at thetencollective.com , and on the back of Mária’s Trading Card above.

Another way to experience Moldován’s refreshing approach to creating whimsical art is to sign up for her weekly handbuilding ceramics class on Thursdays from March 5–26 at Hintonburg Pottery in Ottawa hintonburgpottery.ca . You will learn the basic handbuilding techniques (coiling, pinching and slab-building), as well as surface decoration to adorn your vases or other functional pieces. Alternatively, register at the Ottawa School of Art for her weekly Wednesdays course “High Relief Sculptural Ceramics” to create a high relief sculptural wall hanging. It runs from May 5 to June 17. Release your inner child!