Bogdan Mihai Radu was born near Sibiu, Romania. He has been painting for as long as he can remember and he declares himself lucky. He studied and practiced art therapy in Romania, until a day in 2010 that was announced as absolutely trivial, but turned his life upside down, leaving him motionless for several years. He was affected by Guillain-Barré syndrome, also called „the disease with 1000 faces”. He continued painting while in the hospital, with the brush in his teeth. Then the paralysis subsided and Bogdan continued to paint. Painting is for him an obsession, as he himself confesses.
2018 changed his life again: he won the Grand Prize at the Oxford International Art Fair, where it’s a feat just to be exposed. This was followed by fantastic success at the prestigious Tokyo International Art Fair. Then Bogdan moved to London and his art is in continuous development and ascent. In November 2020, he was awarded by President Klaus Iohannis with the Order of „Cultural Merit” in the rank of Knight.
We talked in a short intermezzo in Bucharest, around the same time that he found out that his life was approaching another critical point.
Bogdan, since when have you been painting?
About as long as I’ve known myself. I made my first drawings at the age of 7. At 11 I saw the movie „The Man from the Ritz Hotel” and everything fascinated me: the character, his lifestyle, the way he painted at night and replaced original paintings with his reproductions. It made me want intensely to become a painter.
So I simply imitated him exactly: I also started painting at night, first a faithful reproduction of a painting I had stolen from my grandmother. I had managed to get into the character’s mind somewhat, but back then I was just playing. However, when I saw that I succeeded, that no one noticed, I asked for another painting from an aunt, then from a neighbour, and I made a small art collection. It all took about two or three years until my mother found them. When I was 12-13 years old, I started wanting to enter galleries, to exhibit like any painter, to be visible – both myself and my work. I generally sold several paintings to my parents’ relatives and work colleagues. Who knows, maybe years from now they will get rich from my early paintings. I ended up making a profession out of it because I felt lucky, blessed as a child.
Why are you painting now?
To feel good, to feel in balance. It’s a partially therapeutic. I would paint whether I sell the works or not. I really don’t know what else to do.
What was it like when you couldn’t paint?
When I was paralysed in the spine, there were several months when I could not move, but I still did not give up and painted with the brush in my mouth. I could not sit in any position, but I was still painting.
The whole thing happened very suddenly: I woke up in the morning, somehow I went to the shower, I was trying to wash myself, then I noticed that I couldn’t feel some parts of my body. I felt my body changing, tingling. By evening, I wasn’t moving at all. I received the diagnosis of chronic polyradiculoneuritis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disease. For more than two years I was hospitalised for a long time: I could practically do nothing, I could only move my head and talk. I was very confused then, very scared, depressed, and had slight memory loss. I was generally conscious, but I can’t say that I really remember everything, because they kept giving me a sedative, sleeping pills, etc. I started all kinds of treatments, first with a human globulin, with Lyrica (pregabalin), with Cortisone, with Medrol, with Gabapentin, with all kinds of hard drugs, which somehow also put me in a state of latency. As soon as I showed signs that I was getting better, I would immediately have a relapse, receive immunoglobulins again and so on. I think I did seven or eight courses of immunoglobulin. Upon discharge, I was advised to go to another hospital to recover – I didn’t want to do it again because I was afraid of hospitals. But even now I still take Gabapentin, Pregabalin, Amitriptyline and all sorts of neuropathic pain meds, as a precaution. If I don’t take them, all kinds of pain and discomfort start to appear.
Now most of all I would like to know where my change of perception came from and why all the time in my mind the vision and the chromaticity are changing. I paint every time what I feel, art critics began to notice large variations between my works and to recommend that I go on a single, constant line or to have some distinct periods (like Picasso).
As for me, I feel that I am still on my line, but from outside they see it differently. It is kind of natural: if an art curator writes about me, about my landscapes, about the sky I paint in the landscape, about my seas, then, suddenly, after a month, after a week, after two months this curator cannot write something different, also about me. This year I released a painting album where there is also an 8-page essay written by Jane Neal, an overview of my entire artistic journey. It is true that I would no longer seem credible if she were to write something else about me now.
Looking from the outside, it appears that when I painted before the paralysis I did have this kind of „continuous line“: I was more constant in what I was working on.
Now I’ve changed quite a bit, really. It’s like I’m not the same anymore – and when I paint I have a different sensation, a much more intense experience, a mix of sensations and states of mind that sometimes ends in mental fatigue, which, in turn, ends in a state of physical fatigue. I find my balance in all of this, but somehow I feel like I’m not quite me anymore; it is a very time-consuming process.
I am trying to discover myself, to know myself better, to learn more about this change, to have a clear answer, to be able to explain it to myself and to the art people I know. Now I also have a psychotherapist.
Is painting a way of life? Can painting provide for your existence, for your independence?
Not all the time, because it is not easy to sell constantly. Like any artist, first I think about how to place the painting, how to frame it, how to enter it in a competition, I seek feedback and likes. And all of this actually makes your sales process harder.
Are there particular people who have marked your career?
Business people, art people, curators, painters. Currently, in London, I collaborate with Jane Neal, a highly acclaimed art historian in the UK and beyond; her speciality are the artists from South-Eastern Europe. I collaborated on this year’s album with her and another very valuable art historian, Michael J. Prokopow, who did an in-depth analysis of a particular painting of mine. I was very impressed by the essay written about me, I think he is the one who best understood my intentions. In Great Britain, I also collaborated with John Martin Gallery, where I exhibited in January 2023, in the group exhibition Hinterland, also curated by Jane Neal. But in London it is quite difficult to get a contract with a good gallery. In addition, all art historians and curators want you to have a consistent work style, a kind of trademark to be recognised by. Jane Neal advises me to walk in a straight line, not the way currently do: landscape today, flowers tomorrow, abstract the day after tomorrow. Or if I like how I paint a certain element, for example the sky, then to make it present in everything I paint. It is not easy for me to do this, because I paint exactly how I feel and my moments are very different – I perceive and feel differently. I could explain this to Jane, but I have no scientific basis to prove it, I have no „certificate of neurodiversity”. However, from the discussions I had with my neurologist in London I deduced that I am in the neurodiversity zone, let’s say in the attention deficit zone. It is not my intention to change my style of painting, I just paint what I see and feel – for me it’s an act of artistic honesty. It is myself in everything, but there are fluctuations in painting that relate to my internal balance – gallerists, on the other hand, usually expect from artists constancy, a very clear line. I think I need a scientific explanation for what is happening with my creative process.. It is not that my creations are different from each other – on the contrary, there is something of me in all of them, but the subject is different, or the chromatics , or the dimensions vary, because the emotion when I painted them was different…
How is your painting received in London?
In London I feel like I’m living in a completely different universe, compared to Romania. The market opportunities here are much more complex, art lovers being much more open, much more relaxed and much more interested in the artist, in the quality of the work, in what lies behind it: the story of the painting, the theme, maybe the artist’s biography. The British have the sense and ability to observe a good piece of art; they go out of their way to purchase it. They do not negotiate a work of art. In London they enjoy the most my transylvanian landscapes.
What is your relationship with styles and trends?
I do have any relationship with styles and trends; I do what I feel and I am always myself. For me painting is sacred, it is the place where I confess to the canvas.
What are you working on now?
I have a project with Transylvanian forests. In nature everything changes – and of course also the forests of Transylvania.
I perceive it as changing radically, very dynamically. What I actually paint are the inner forests.
I want to develop the landscape as much as possible, to penetrate it to the matter, to the ground, to the depth, to the roots that go into the ground from one tree to another.
I want to study and develop the deep structures: the branches, the bark of the tree, the texture, the colour, how it changes between seasons.
How did you come to have such an intimate relationship with nature?
Nature gives me a feeling of well-being, I find myself in it.
I always take with me a fallen leaf or a green tree branch.
I would like to go to the snowy forest in winter, to see how the colour changes, the shape, the intensity, everything.
I am concerned with this metamorphosis, the transition from spring to summer, from winter to spring; I’m fascinated by that period when everything turns green, everything black goes into the ground, and everything alive and fresh comes out. I would like to stay in a tent or cabin in the mountains, for two weeks, to see every day with my own eyes the same landscape, see how everything grows and changes.
I really want to do this experiment. I would record everything on a camera, to show how all nature changed from Monday to Friday – and how I changed. I could photograph the same tree every day for a month and see how it transforms and put it on canvas. On this occasion, I would also give people the opportunity to see the wealth of transformations in nature: all people are now on the run, in a hurry, living in technology and they do not have time to see their nature. I would like to stop them for a bit, to bring them back to reality.