Romanian
Lives and works in Vermont, Iillinois

Ioana Datcu works in various styles and media. Her mixed media works, which she calls photo-paintings, explore the two different languages of paint and photography. Through painting on photographs she alters the photographic reality and creates new light/shadow effects, enriched rich tones, textures, and colors. The figures in the photographs exist in the external world, but the space surrounding them becomes subjective, a part of the artist’s interior reality. Datcu has sometimes grouped photo-paintings or oil paintings on canvas together as installations. The scale and diversity of an installation better allows a linkage experience, memory, tradition, and religion.

A native of Romania, Ioana Datcu came to the United States with her family in 1981. She received an MFA in drawing and painting from the University of Minnesota in 1991. She has been working in photography and painting and has exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe. She has received many grants and scholarships, including a grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation. Datcu’s artworks are in many public and private art collections across the United States.