“We are the postmen of the past who leave letters to those of the future”: In conversation with Ana Gurduza

Photo courtesy of Ana Gurduza

To be amazed is still possible. Gather round, it’s time for a story. A story that, in the spirit of the approaching holidays, flickers even brighter.

Ana Gurduza makes poetry… with her hands. With every piece of art, she reveals an ocean of feelings, a sensation of being. When talking to her, seeing her at work, or holding one of her objects in your hands, you can almost capture that fleeting feeling of being wild in the solitude of creation. Blue is the colour that moves her universe, just like it moves a child’s heart. With curiosity and wander, she leans into each day, each day a blank slate upon which she draws he story. Crafting each piece with precision and care, a long process that has no shortcuts, every idea flowing like uncharted waves. How beautiful it is, in this fast paced world, to slow down and surround yourself with meaningful pieces that are sure to illuminate any space, and the lives of those who inhabit it, with elegance and warmth.

In our conversation, Ana and I talk about objects that are made with soul, the fairy tale she feels must be shared with others, Constantin Brâncuși, and the story of the colour blue.

Photos courtesy of Ana Gurduza

Ana, when I look at your art I feel that one of the things that draws you to create is our own human kind, in all its complexity, uniqueness and ephemerality, all beautifully interwoven by the imaginary. Is that true?

I feel beauty in your curiosity, it questions the nature of artistic manifestation. Is the creative spirit an extension of the ephemeral and sensitive self or is it a separate body activated by the act of creation? Here I am reminded of the nature of the first photographic images that were exposed as art form, being categorized, phenomenologically speaking, as windows or mirrors. The window image is one oriented towards the outside, the seen world. The mirror is a reflection of the inner world put into image. I want to believe that I belong to those whose soul is a strainer through which actions, glances, acts can reflect an interior reality. People and objects are interpreted sensitively so that we can speak through them. It is an opportunity to play, to illuminate the dark nights, to transpose oneself into a story. That is to say, the object is more than an object, it is a portal between the one who creates, me (through whom the gift of grace flows, as ancient Greeks thought), and the one who looks, who possesses an inner alphabet for decrypting in different measures mirrors of the reality of people who questioned the status quo of the world through color, letters, notes, movements, materials, forms or ideas.

The imaginary is real, the proof of Homo Ludens, who has no other purpose than to spend this interval in flesh and blood, between birth and death. Everyone chooses their own imaginary. Some bring it from the future and dream of conquering the cosmic ethers, others come from the past and, like astronomers, tell stories about the light of stars that have burned long centuries ago but still shine their dead light. Both speak, in essence, of the intricate human nature, which dreams of the immaterial, of ideas, of states, of birds in the sky and depths of the oceans. The atemporal condition is taken by the act of creation, through which we gain the freedom of choosing to whom to be alike and get close to the image of divinity, surpassing time.

“I want to believe that I belong to those
whose soul is a strainer through which actions,
glances, acts can reflect an interior reality.”

What is your earliest drawing memory?

My earliest drawing memory is a flower of spring, at the legs of my sleeping mother. It was a dark day, with no time and no season, I was as a child, dreaming that I am sleeping, and while asleep drawing a flower. I tried to hear the dream of my mother, but she was dreaming that I am sleeping, and I was dreaming of a spring flower that I was firstly drawing.

You studied architecture. What came first, art or architecture?

This is indeed a complex question. Architecture is often regarded by us, humans, as a form of art – our way of shaping matter to create the protective shell we call A Place. Yet, if I were to categorize, distinguish, and compare the arts, I would argue that the classical arts hold a foundational position.

The earliest humans used music, painting, and pottery to engage with the world – not through ownership or belonging, but through a unique relationship of connection and representation. Unlike our modern approach, influenced by Renaissance logic and its focus on possession, early humans interacted with the world as observers and participants, not proprietors.
They conquered elephants, deer, and wild oxen not by physical force but by capturing their essence – their souls – through drawings. In doing so, they sought to understand and immortalize that ineffable something we call nature. They sang and chanted tales of imaginary gods and lions, transcending the boundaries of the biological world through word, sound, and dance. In these acts, they moved beyond the “here and now,” creating a bridge between the tangible and the intangible, the real and the imagined.

Photos courtesy of Ana Gurduza

What is the best thing about working with your hands?

My mind goes to the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși who thought that each material has its own language and we must work with them until others understand its language. I am guided by this quest for understanding the way the hand transforms the material from a nonliving matter to a shape filled with meaning.

For me, working with my hands means three things.

The wonder of encountering the unexpected. Material has its own will that it expresses and calls the fingers to a dance of creation and destruction. This closeness to divinity and the unexpected fascinates me. Most of the time, when I set out to create and transform the material in front, I don’t know exactly what I am aiming. The intention is strong but the shape is vague and undefined, leaving a lot of room for the wonder of unexpected. I believe writers, musicians, painters share the same miracle for the chance worn on a strong bone of the idea.

The relationship between thinking and making (creation), idea and execution, matter and movement. The imagination of the hand as an independent force, that it sometimes surpasses the one of the though and begins an independent life and sometimes submits to thinking. To speak the language of the matter you possess, to understand its character so that it flourishes in its most specific way. Just as you cannot sculpt pottery with a hammer, you cannot shape stone with your hands, but you work in the discovery of matter and the disposal of surplus, a reverse logic than in working with the earth. The life of the material and the hand that discovers it and adapts to it is what fascinates me.

Working with the hands, and especially in art, teaches you to be solitary, to be introspective and to question the multiple interrogations of your own self, which is then reflected in the art created. Solitude with the matter, the attention paid to a fragile object, which depends on the play of fingers, stimulates observation, attention, play, and creativity. You catch yourself frolicking in the field of childhood with your grandmother who no longer exists or climbing a tree of the future that will never grow.

Photo courtesy of Ana Gurduza

An artist once told me that, for inspiration, he doesn’t look at art, but rather at everything else. Who and what inspires and has inspired you the most?

I have never asked myself this question, thank you.

I know I never did create a border between a place, a person, an object that is inspiring as a category in itself and another that is not. I believe, for me, inspiration is a result of intentionality through a search, it does not need to be methodical, algorithmically or logic, it is closer to an observer in a boat. In the state of search, especially in an induced observation and non-thinking pulse, all outside and inside become generative. It can be a tree, a story, a piece of art, a person, a lover or a smell. In this referential construction, the outside rather leaks into me, with very little control on my part. As I like to say, I have a thin skin, the outside penetrates easily and anchors itself deeply in me. But I am reminded that we only love what is different from us, even if in our attempt to domesticate, we want to (un)resemble the other. But the more we get closer, the more it becomes known, and paradoxically we need another angle to see it and to outstrange the world again. Or it is consumed, and this we call the death of a project, fulfilling by exhaustion the subject. Sometimes I feel the need to estrange the known world to me.

We believe that the truth can be possessed by the other and this stranger attracts us, that is, different from our own essence. Everything that is unknown to me inspires me, because it throws me into being a child, into not knowing and being able to see differently. That’s why we squint when we paint, that’s why we distance ourselves from works we love, and sometimes from people. But this is one of the thousands of attitudes in the face of life, which I will leave as soon as spring comes to me and painfully takes off my skin to permit a new happiness and wet another way of seeing.

”We are the postmen of the past who leave letters to those of the future,
telling about us, how we loved and how we brought joy to the earth.”

When we are no longer children, we are already dead,” said Brâncuși. I usually ask my artist guests their favourite books from when they were children. But I would like to ask you if now, as an adult, you have favourite children’s books.

I have a few favorite children’s books, but one that I come to again and again is Youth Without Old Age and Life Without Death. This fairy tale resonates deeply with me—not only through its connection to Romanian culture, but also because it touches on profound aspects of what we call humanity. Its timeless theme of the longing for immortality, the refusal to fully embrace the human condition, and the quest for eternity is one I’ve often explored in conversations with adults.

The interpretations I’ve encountered range widely—from parallels with the story of Christ, to notions of reincarnation, to the enduring essence of the immortal soul that resists becoming human again and experiencing suffering. To me, this story transcends age; it carries a depth that makes it equally meaningful for both children and adults. It’s a tale that deserves to be shared, offering a space for reflection and connection across generations.

Photo courtesy of Ana Gurduza

I am particularly fascinated by your ink lines, how through this economy of means you can create images that are so honest, powerful and filled with emotion. You work in different mediums: drawing, ink line, watercolor. Is there any medium you prefer more, and why?

All these expressions are a luxury I allow myself as a small atelier, which can very quickly learn from mistakes, experiment, change and create through different means intentionality of sensation. It’s the privilege I get when I’m not attached to opinions and can follow desires and growth as an experiment. The idea is to make as many mistakes as possible and try what my spirit desires.

I see work as an inventive exploration that generates as a main intention ideas that are nonmaterial, that transform the structure of understanding the world, using as a tool materials, forms, stories, words, colors etc. That is to say, surpassing the biological condition of being a human. These means are only possible if you allow yourself to be a child, to be mistaken, ridiculous, to not be yourself.

Lines, shapes, colours, have the same role, be it in ceramics, graphic or painting, to be able to tell and touch another, who maybe by chance, out of the corner of the eye goes through the same state of the soul. It is just like a written book that has meaning and is only realized when it reaches the man who reads it. These two make sense together, the communication takes place between me-the creator and the man-perceiver who reads this expression, which is not mine but ours, it is in the interstice between us, or so I wish it to be. This dialogue is different but equally telling through each of the above mediums.

All these imaginations and memories put together converge in a collective proto-memory that each new century pours out, it lives in each of us. We are the postmen of the past who leave letters to those of the future, telling about us, how we loved and how we brought joy to the earth. I am one of the transmitters of this human protomemory, my purpose is to bring joy to others, through any medium I find interesting.

Ceramics results in a special, unique and, as I like to say, immortal object. It seeks to beautify life. Pottery made in workshops is not utilitarian by nature, objects are made with soul, the artist is completely dedicated to each individual object, each one is touched, cared for and goes through all the arduous processes. An author’s object is a slow object, invested with intention and joy. That is why it is a precious one, for people who want unique pieces and intend to contribute to the beauty of our century.

”Working with the hands, and especially in art,
teaches you to be solitary, to be introspective.[…]
You catch yourself frolicking in the field of childhood
with your grandmother who no longer exists or
climbing a tree of the future that will never grow.”

Photos courtesy of Ana Gurduza

I do believe that objects that are made with love and care can bring joy to daily life, to the people who surround themselves with beautiful things on a daily basis. Can you name a couple of objects in your home (not created by you) that have a special meaning and which you could never part with?

I think I could part with any object, but any parting would hurt me.

The beauty we surround ourselves with, through objects, creates a circle of sensations—filled with sounds, textures, thresholds, images, and memories. It resides in the height of a window that appears ever-changing or the house that shapes a sense of place. This beauty belongs to the essence of being; it is the mysterious interplay between the actual object, the way we remember it, and the consciousness that reimagines it. In essence, beauty transforms the imaginary into a constructed reality. Through these objects, we give form and meaning to the world, connecting them to childhood memories and the comforting image of familiarity.

Beauty and objects speak to the essential care of oneself. They engage the faculties of sensation, imagination, and perception, which enable our participation in the world. The objects we gather around us merge two dimensions: the mental—formed by perceptions and memories that shape the experience of lived spaces—and the physical, embodied in the house and the city as sources of sensation. These objects also open the door to an imagined world, projecting desires and nostalgia. They anchor us to fixed points, reflecting our aspirations and the longing of the self as we navigate life on this earth.

“We live a maximum of biological comfort that disregards
appreciation of beauty (not that of hyper aestheticization).
In this deliberate abstraction, we live a small hour of a small life.”

Could you tell us more about your Blue Series? How did that idea come to be?

My heart loves blue.

This color has a special story. Due to its rarity in nature, blue has a shorter history than the other colors. Blue belonged to something volatile and unattainable like the sky and the sea, both unfathomable. The Greeks did not have a special name for this colour (other than the colour of the sea and sky). The Egyptians used it, from the dust of the stone Lapis lazuli (heaven stone), which arrived in Europe (Italy) only in the Early Middle Ages. Being the most expensive and fine pigment, brought precisely from the region of Afghanistan (this is where the name ultramarine comes from, i.e. the pigment brought from overseas) it was used for the absolutely special elements, such as the mantle of the Virgin, for Giotto’s blue sky in the Basilica of Saint Francis from Assisi or precious details that marked a special character. In the early Renaissance, the Venetian church established a monopoly on blue, with strictures on where and how it could be used; had become a symbol color. It is the same blue that, given its preciousness, was used in the fresco seco technique, that is, as a later layer added over the raw fresco, which caused the deterioration of the blue (and gold) pigment on medieval and renaissance frescoes.

Today we cannot imagine a world without blue, in gradients and shades. I bring the same elogy to the symbol-color, the sky-colors, walking upwards, through the especially deep blue of cobalt oxide. It is a stable pigent, what for me has something immaterial that surpases my condition of being human.

You’ve made me wonder of why so many children, when you ask them about their favourite colour, they say it’s blue. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

I am amused and delighted by your question, which is as playful as the choice of childish blue. I think it is somewhere imprinted in us, those belonging to the sea and waters. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Siberians have multiple words for snow, in their need to accurately describe the state of nature that defines their living. And we have a multitude of words for emotions, while my heart and the children’s one have multiple latitudes of the ancestral blue.

Photos courtesy of Ana Gurduza

Have you ever considered creating a film poster? Not any film poster, though. The films of Jean Cocteau, for example, they immediately sprang into my mind, I would love to see your take on one of his films.

I love your questions, they provoke me and raise thoughts of a potential future, that in my mind is so close to what you propose, a renaissance of entanglement between arts and mediums.

Actually, I was invited by a friend, a film director and actor in the cultural scene of Romania and Moldova, whose work I admire a lot, Nicolae Gaburici, to make the poster for his movie that is still in the works. I saw parts of it and got inspired by the poetic imagistic and opportunity to be part of the story that, as we know, looking from the future to the past holds the miracle of creation and becomes part of the history of things.

Winged Words: Illustrated Romanian Proverbs, with illustrations by Ana Gurduza

I am looking forward to seeing your work for the film. Tell me, Ana, in this time and age, what do you wish people appreciated more?

Fantastic question. I think that if I had a wish for humanity in the horizon of this time, to the extent of our power of appreciation, I would wish for us as people of this earth to appreciate and seek the state of presence.

I think that our forms of absorption in reality prevail, and we no longer like to be in the present, to be bored, to look up at the falling leaves. We live a maximum of biological comfort that disregards appreciation of beauty (not that of hyper aestheticization). In this deliberate abstraction, we live a small hour of a small life.

André Gide tells us: “For you I write these pages, I who no longer feel the taste of the earth, cause you, my reader, are not surprised enough of that you are alive, you do not admire at it’s height the miracle that is your life.”

”Everything that is unknown to me inspires me,
because it throws me into being a child,
into not knowing and being able to see differently.”

Website: arsana.art | Instagram: @ars__ana