| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Specialising in functional and display ceramics, Romanian-born artist Lucia Atanase designs and produces plaster models and molds for casting, and is skilled at transposition of ceramic material, modelling, curving, and hand-building.
Trained at the Ion Andreescu Academy of Visual Arts in Cluj Napoca, Romania, Atanase earned her BFA in Ceramics (1982). Her education includes mechanical drawing, descriptive geometry, and philosophy. She has worked as a porcelain designer since 1982, and has since 1988 been a freelance artist based first in Baia Mare, Romania and then at her private studio in Calgary.
Of her work, Atanase says, “Within ceramics, there is the opportunity to synthesise my interests in sculpture, painting, and drawing. It is a limitless territory [and a] never-ending source of exploration for my own development and self-exploration.” Noting that nature is her primary inspiration, she says that agricultural moments of germination and harvest “reflect an organic affinity influenced by appropriate colours and textures.”
Atanase has participated in more than fifty national and international exhibitions, including in Holland, the former Yugoslavia, Italy, and Germany, and the porcelain symposia in Cluj Napoca and Baia Mare, Romania. A range of private and corporate collections in Canada, Romania, Hungary, Holland, and Germany house Atanase’s work. She has been a member of the Alberta Craft Council, the Nova Scotia Craft Council, the Professional Artists’ Organisation of Bucharest, and the Professional Young Artists Studio 53 in Romania. |