Biography
Meet The Artist 🎨
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do" ❤️
- Steve Jobs
Hi! My name is Adriana Popa and I was born in Timisoara, Romania in the summer of 1987. I grew up in a modest family, playing on the streets with my sisters and other Neighbour kids, using our Imagination to create games and toys out of nothing. inside the house was not much to do, so I was outdoors all the time playing with mud/clay, collecting leaves and flowers to preserve or make pigments out of them, chasing butterflies and playing with farm animals. It was a beautiful childhood where I was free to explore Mother Nature!
When I got my first coloring book with pencils I was so excited and when I got into painting with watercolor-based paints I was thrilled. I used to stay for hours to mix colors and try to imitate nature in my paintings. When I started school, art was my favorite subject and I was participating in school exhibitions from a young age. Coming from a communist background our art teacher was strict and very serious in teaching us all different techniques. Unfortunately, as I was growing up I came to the wrong conclusion that art was a hobby and not a profession.
As a young woman who was not encouraged to pursue this dream, I started to give up and focus on other means of income. After finishing high-school I moved to Italy and I started working and doing my best to blend into society. For many years I did different jobs but none of them satisfied my artistic need. However, over time, my perception of art as a profession has changed, and I have noticed that there are various career paths in the world of art. I started painting nails and decorating them with flowers and other intricate details. This new passion pushed me to enroll in a course study in the beauty industry. I enjoyed working as a beauty therapist but still, I was unfulfilled.
I moved to Australia in 2016 and I stumbled into face painting while visiting a shopping center where a kids' activity was taking place. For me, this art form was like a magnet dragging me into it and as soon as I tested I felt instant love and the need to make this a job. I started to collect information from free resources available on the internet and trained myself until I was confident and happy with my results. I enrolled in workshops with experienced artists and learned so much about painting techniques getting my artistic skills to high levels of quality. Every day I learn something new and my great inspiration comes from our beautiful universe that includes everything and everyone!
As Albert Einstein said, “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” In this blog I would like to help others who are starting like me, from scratches, to learn about face painting, to reach something that they like, to have no fear of perfection in expression through art and to be true to themselves when painting. It will be a beautiful journey, I can feel it happening!
with love, 🥰