Interview

Jan 29

Mary Jordan

Mary Jordan is a contemporary painter based in Rome. Her artistic research focuses on memory, psyche, time and inner transformation. After 28 years, she resumed painting in April 2025, marking a personal and professional rebirth that quickly led her to international recognition. Mary’s works, made of oil and acrylic on canvas, gold leaf, combine symbolism and introspection, giving shape to silent emotions and thresholds interior. She has participated in exhibitions and competitions in Italy, for 2026 with selections already confirmed Italy, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, the United States. Painting is an act of emotional truth: each painting is a voice that preserves what remains and transforms vulnerability into strength.

What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?

“I was born in Romania and grew up between two cultures: the Romanian and the Italian. Since I was a child, I have painted next to my grandmother, who taught me to observe the world with sensitivity and imagination. For 28 years, I moved away from art, but in April 2025 I felt a deep call: I resumed painting as an act of rebirth. From that moment, painting has become my most authentic language, the way I transform emotions, silences and memories into my own people in pictures.”

What inspires you?

“I am inspired by the passing of time, the untied that change, the fragility that becomes strength. I am inspired by silence, solitude, nature, dreams, memory. Each work is born from an inner urgency: an emotion that cannot be spoken, but only painted.”

What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?

“I themes I explore are memory, rebirth, time and introspection. My works reflect the silent transformation of the psyche, the emotional traces left by experience, and the fragile strength that arises from vulnerability. Each painting is a symbolic threshold between what we are becoming. The underlying message is that pain can become light, and silence can speak through color.”

How would you describe your work?

“My work is a journey in interiority. I paint what cannot be said: emotions, silences, memories, threshold. My works combine symbolism and introspection, feminine configurations, natural elements and architecture suspended in time. Each canvas is a poetic space where vulnerability becomes strength, and color becomes voice. It is a painting that seeks emotional truths, that preserves what remains and transforms pain into light.”

Which artists influence you most?

“I am attracted to artists who explore the inner and symbolic dimension. I am attracted to artists who explore the inner and symbolic dimension. I am inspired by the masters of iconography for their silent sacredness, the symbolists for the ability to transform emotions into images, and some contemporaries who work on memory, the body and spirituality. I don't try to imitate, but to absorb atmospheres, sensibilities, ways of looking at the world. Each influence becomes a personal echo in my painting.”

What is your creative process like?

“My creative process stems from an inner urgency. First listening: an emotion, a memory, a mental image that asks for form. Then, I let the color guide my hand, without rigid patterns. I paint in silence, in a suspended space where time stops. Each work reveals itself, as if it were already written behind me. It is an act of introspection, of transformation, where vulnerability becomes light and the pictorial gesture becomes voice.”

What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?

“I believe that the artist has the task of preserving what is often forgotten: sensitivity, memory, human fragility. In a fast and noisy way, art creates pauses, questions, spaces of truth. The artist is a bridge between interiority and collectivity, between what we feel and what we are unable to express. Today more than ever, art is called to be testimony, resistance, light. Its role evolves towards a more conscious presence, capable of transforming staff into universes.”

Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?

“I received the Artist of Europe Award in 2025, with the certificate of merit for the creative value of my works. I had an exhibition at Arte Spazio Tempo in Venice, where I exhibited Cronos and I received the Psyche Leonardo Visual Art Award in Rome, with inclusion in the Effetto Arte catalogue Art Global in Rome, with certificates of merit and thanks for cultural contribution. At the Dantes Bus Competition in Florence, I received a certificate of participation. I have upcoming art competitions in March in Italy, London, Luxembourg and America.”

Instagram: @maryjordan0000