Daniela Zekina

Meet the artist

For thirty years as a professional artist, Daniela Zekina has always been drawn to mixed media art. The characters in her paintings are often inspired by mythology, and its messages.

She is from Bulgaria - an ancient country created in the seventh century on the territory of the former Byzantine Empire, and mythology marks its cultural references very strongly. Having devoted her life to visual art since childhood, she also has a great affinity for music, poetry, dance, theater, and all forms of art.

For her, art is the spirit of a human being who is having fun, who is looking for new territories where reality and dreams exist in perfect harmony, able to spread new fantastic worlds where everything is possible. 

Daniela always seeks an intimate connection between the work, and the viewer, through various fine details that attract the eye and captivate the attention. Her works are figurative in their forms, but the arrangement is still unreal. The themes are often associated with Greek mythology or the ancient mythology of Northern Europe or America. Characters appear in the form of metaphors symbolizing feelings.

In her latest works, she explores the theme of metamorphosis - the transformation of the face or body, by supplying objects and forms added in different ways, symbolizing an inner world as a poetic symbiosis between the real, and the imaginary.

In her previous solo exhibitions (Interior Women, 2006, Muses, 2009, Almost Flight, 2010, The First Snow, 2010, Allegories, 2011, Fugue Time, 2012, Love Gardens, 2013, Calliope and Her Sisters, 2013, Allegories, 2015 ), Daniela often portrays mythological characters. 

Often treated so surrealistically, her characters appear out of a dream, sometimes surrounded by everyday objects, taking on a new symbolic and poetic meaning in an unusual atmosphere. 

These characters express different feelings, different states of mind, and the objects that surround them intensify the internal debates in their souls. The elements of nature (wood, leaves, herbs, flowers, sky and water) are ubiquitous in her images and symbolize the eternal connection between man and his environment, a fragile connection without which our life is impossible.

Works by Daniela Zekina