Dorina Mocan, Friends

I would like to begin this interview from the milepost zero.

I am the founder of the platform One Kind Voice, a mindfulness and meditation platform with a consistent and devoted following, mainly friends, family and new participants met on this path of vulnerability and courage. One Kind Voice is my passion project born from the desire to learn how to learn people who need support, when they need it most. The ones who will read this interview are people like me and you, who have never stopped searching on their profound journey of rediscovery or simply curios hearts searching for a connection, beyond time and space.

We all have our own path, we all make decisions and thereby change the course of our lives, and of course, we all go through some key life-altering moments. What connects us to one another is emotion. And what unites us with a memory when seen retrospectively, and what impresses us in the here and now, is the emotion produced by our dreams and our anxiety of the future – of the unknown.

On the one hand, we recreate a familiar rhythm in life, an inner ritual in everything we do each and every day, and this then helps us to stabilise and reinforce a foundation for our lives. On the other hand, we are constantly changing ourselves, reinventing ourselves with each conversation and with each event we attend, with each interaction and encounter – whether that be with a pigeon landing on our window seal, or with a person who greets us warmly with a big and sincere smile while opening the door for us every day, wishing us a great day.

We don’t owe each other anything, but at the same time, we owe each other everything! We owe each other a sense of profound gratefulness when we recognize the signs around us, which surround us with optimism, warmth and hope. We owe each other a saving grace. Perhaps even today, while we were reconnecting, you might have helped me to overcome a difficult, delicate moment – a moment that would have made me feel small, as if I don’t belong. Like Alice’s transformation in Wonderland.My desire is to remain in this present moment as our paths are crossing and try, as much as time and trust allow, to talk a little about emotion, creation and its flow, and about hope and what it means for us.

The amazing people who read my newsletter and articles on Substack are moved by each and every new interaction. Just like I feel moved by so many creators who have paved the way for others in expressing emotion with a rare sensitivity.

For me, these are writers like Suleika Jaouad or Elizabeth Gilbert, and many others. But these two names carry an openness and revelation of the present moment that greatly helps me to not ever feel alone.

I say again and again, dear Dorina, that it has given me enormous pleasure to read your articles in which you described your path in becoming an established painter and artist who is respected in many new lands, far away from your native country, but still spiritually connected with a mythical thread which inspires and invigorates us like a freshwater spring. A resource of soulful creation and recreation, which then arrives and is transmitted in our art akin to a mystical process. I am still transported into an ethereal, elegant and empathetic world, which I notice in all your works of art.

In all of my live interviews so far I have maintained a natural flow of conversation between friends enjoying a cup of coffee or tea while having a heart to heart conversation. In a written interview, more thoughts are being gathered and more connections are being created, but since this is my magical writing hour, early in the morning, I would like to impart the same naturalness in my current questions for this interview.

I will launch a set of questions, starting from my first interaction with your art until we reconnected. What I see, what I hear, what reappears after I look at a painting, what remains and what constantly returns again and again.

Dear audience I hereby introduce you the soul conversation with painter Dorina Mocan.

I am offering here only a glimpse as the material is much longer and would be better to review it in its full glory as the painter Dorina Mocan has shared wonderful images of her art.

Maggie: I remember the charm of our meeting probably around 20 years ago in Hong Kong when I discovered your works at the Conoisseur Art Gallery, on Hollywood Road. I often went on walks in that area and I also lived there for a while. My memories are not very clear, I’m not sure if we met in person at the opening of the exhibition.

What is certain is that I have a first catalogue of your works and probably one of the works – a female character wearing an internal smile of overwhelming serenity – The Girl Among the Leaves. Or another, such as Princess of the Garden – the girl with a symbolic ponytail, perfectly arched, a circle that accompanies her like an aura, or a presence.

Since we reconnected when I was still in Hong Kong, and I am still here 20 years later, please tell us in what way Hong Kong impressed you back then and what do you still keep in your memory now? What do you carry in your heart from Hong Kong?

Dorina: Dear Magdalena, I feel a strong warmth, reciprocity and recognition when I read you.The same feeling as the times we talked to each other for hours. I, in turn, am curious to explore what the obvious power of our meeting will bring with it. Happy and amazed, I gratefully accept your wonderful questions that come with the sunrise in your part of the world, a city that I have thought about more and more often this past autumn.

It was 20 years ago that I exhibited for the first time in Hong Kong at the invitation of Connoisseur Art Gallery at Hollywood Road no.1 and 14 years of good collaboration began. It has been a significant period in my life and my career with many wonderful memories that I carry within me with joy. That is why my thoughts went extra often to this city just before you appeared in my life – lively, wise, emotional, and with a wonderful laugh and curiosity.

I am not surprised that you have stayed in Hong Kong for so long. There is a seething energy in the city that matches yours, I would think. I didn’t see myself being able to stay there and work for a long time, but I enjoyed my stays in connection with various exhibitions I attended over the years.

It was a beneficial break and a necessity to follow my paintings on their journey to the other side of the world and experience that they were received in a dignified way. I was happy to experience such a friendly and respectful reception of both my work and me as a person. The gallery has made it possible for my art to meet a wide audience and collectors of my works all over the world. We can also thank that gallery for the fact that you and I have met.

When we look back, we should always remember the people who have laid the important building blocks in our life story. That is something I carry in my heart with gratitude. The city itself, in constant motion, had a hectic everyday life and traffic, but at the same time welcomed me with kindness and gave me much-needed peace and some kind of rest after a long period of work.

The preparations for the opening were underway, the hanging of the paintings in the exhibition looked always good and I was happy and expectant every time before a new meeting with the audience. The excitement was also there in a positive way and a few days later I was able to leave the city, on my way home with great satisfaction and gratitude.

Maggie: Both of us were born in Eastern Europe, and our paths have taken us to other lands.

Do you have any memories of when you were a child growing up, when you wanted to be somewhere other than your hometown?

Perhaps as an example – I had a passion for speaking English and an inclination to speak it alone at home, sometimes with an invented character in front of the mirror, or holding an English class for my dolls. I would line them up and even keep an official register and give them grades for their English class.

At the time, I had no idea of the impact this language would have on my future, but I have been speaking English for a very long time. Although this is a country where I ended up by chance and without even seeing Hong Kong before I moved there.

I would be curious to know if you remember anything that might have indicated to you that you would like to fly away, to expand your energy, to exist outside of any particular location –of the cities where you’ve lived before, of the university where you studied, of the places you went through while growing up and becoming an adult.

Have you ever felt that there is a world much bigger than what is present in your life in immediate form?

Dorina: Longing or DOR in Romanian language, this special word – included in my own name – has always been there for me too. Playing, painting and drawing have been a solution to escape which was close at hand and still is. During my upbringing, there was always a feeling that I have to go on somewhere else. I grew up next door to a summer cinema where my favourite films were in Spanish and I learnt songs and some of the actors’ lines by heart.

It was the beautiful, passionate language of love and it led me quite naturally into my first love, when, just in time for my 20th birthday, I met my future husband, a fellow student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Romania. He was a political refugee and a Spanish-speaker from Chile. This meeting opened up paths out of my home country to Sweden, which in turn has been an important stepping stone for my international career.

Regardless of any geographical relocation, we carry ourselves with us and then it is important to be well anchored in ourselves and our dreams no matter where we are. The constant longing for the distant is also there as an increasingly stronger awareness of and perception of other more or less visible worlds. It feels like receiving a favor every time my world can come close, be let in and thus be part of something bigger that we are constantly longing for. The great homecoming.

Dorina Mocan, Princess of the Garden

Feel free to take a minute and immerse yourselves in Dorina’s world. Everything is connected and through her art we are all connected too with all elements.

As the interview took place over the course or multiple discussions and exchanges during one month ago, prior to Christmas time, we have worked on a beautiful material ever since, in multiple languages, English, Swedish and Romanian and the links could be also found on my platform,One Kind Voice. Gift this time to yourself and explore a new world with Dorina.

Interview Dorina Mocan for One Kind Voice