Daniel Cristian Chiriac, born 1972 in Romania, polyurea oil on canvas. His preferred styles are realism and surrealism. After a long period of abstractionism (before 2006), Chiriac rediscovered the beautiful paintings of the old masters. Being more and more interested in the old masters techniques, he slowly abandoned the abstract art style and turned to surrealism, fantastic realism and classical realism style. Most of his time is dedicated to his little daughters and wife and of course, creating art. Here today, he brings to us his story complete with perspicacity and personal anecdotes relating to his experience of life as an artist.
What is the story behind the works you wish to focus on “Till the end of time” and “The last love of Don Juan”?
Well, it’s not so much the story behind them than the fact these two paintings are my favorites.
“Till the end of time” is a painted love poem to my sweet lady, Daniela. She is the sitting model for my painting.
The picture is a symbol of time evanescence. Being so, all that counts in the end is love which must be preserved along the years.
This painting is also my first conscientious attempt to deal with the golden proportion. I never ever, before or after this have done so many calculi for a single composition! Who’s that to tell that love isn’t mathematics?! Well, my love is mathematics… Daniela is a math teacher.
As for the second painting, I was thinking about this subject for a couple of years before getting started painting it. I saw this title on the street. It was a theater play. The play is quite obscure and I didn’t see it so my composition has nothing in common with it except for the title. All the inspiration came from that title around which I developed the story starting from this question:
– What if Don Juan didn’t go to hell after his last “love”?
I looked over this question with an optimistic vision, somehow pre-raphaelistic, and not in a pessimistic, post-modern philosophical view ( If post-modern, I would have needed to think upon Don Juan’s last love as the term itself says: last..so, the very last of Don Juan’s loves. As if he knew it is the last one and then think what would have been his feelings about… well… I digress… let’s go back to the main story…
So this is my story:
What if Don Juan had stopped flying from one flower to another? According to the legend of Don Juan, he didn’t stop seducing women and his end was in hell… but, being myself a romantic type, I thought that, in certain circumstances, Don Juan could have also been seduced and so, to find “the only one” that was truly for him.
This is the subject of my “The last love of Don Juan”… well, I think that the title should be “The only love of Don Juan” because I think all his “activity” was only a performance not love because I do believe in true love comprised of devotion, respect and sacrifice (unfortunately, so depreciated in these days of exacerbated egoism)… and therefore this is my version of the legend of Don Juan ending: I think that Don Juan could have found his true love with divine help only.
The foreground sculptural element including the chalice, the hand and the pomegranate, represents the life of Don Juan as we knew it: full of lust, carnal pleasure, in a continuous hunt to feed the personal pleasure, all of these, under a demonic influence.
With divine help – which is represented by the dodecahedron which is a symbol of the heaven substance (according to Aristotle) – Don Juan found a woman who embodied all the meanings of a virgin (note the Virgo constellation on the dodecahedron). Only a perfect Virgo could “capture” the soul of Don Juan, I think.
After that, Don Juan realized that his previous life was just a mask and casts it off and then flew for his love on a silver string to the Moon. The Moon itself is at the first quarter which means that the new love is growing.