Music and an interplay of lights and canvas — it is an opportunity to unleash your inner Picasso. In this poetic atmosphere, many discover their hidden talents for the first time and are themselves pleasantly surprised by the results.
Conducted by the up and coming art scene starlet Crina Apetrei, the London-based Romanian artist currently visiting Doha, the “Paint with Feeling” night at Nozomi, Marsa Malaz Kempinski is a therapy that allows participants to unwind using the means of art and music together.
The idea comes directly from Crina’s personal experience and she calls it free painting. “It frees your soul and let you unleash your inner artist. It allows you to concentrate and focus on your own problems and bring them onto the canvas. It is essentially an art therapy,” Crina tells Community in a chat post her second such session at the uptown restaurant.
Attended by a large number of expatriate men and women from different communities, the session is formatted in a way that allows the participants sitting in groups to work on their painting ideas while a soundtrack chosen specifically to unlock deep desires and emotions plays in the background.
The lights change colours every 20 minutes of the two-hour session as does the tempo of the music. “It is a very soothing music and when accompanied by the lights of different colours, it directly and strongly influences your mood,” says Crina, who hops from one participant to the other, advising them on their work.
Carina says the idea is for the people to break free of any limitations and paint whatever they want and however they want. “You do not have to be an artist or have an artistic aptitude. Anybody can just join in and play with paints in this poetic atmosphere. At the end of the session, you would feel relaxed and free,” says Crina.
She has always been a free soul, she says, who never felt happy under any kind of restrictions to her artistic work. Drawing and painting on her house and school walls since the age of 6, Crina says she has always inclined towards finding means to find the ultimate freedom of soul and unleash her inner artist to go beyond any boundaries.
“I love painting on the walls and ceilings because they are huge and it allows me to go on and on with my paints. There are no limitations and I feel the most content when I do that,” says the Romanian artist.
And this realisation of finding inner peace and contentment through freedom led her to design the “Paint with Feeling” sessions. “I realised if I was benefiting from the experience, there would be many others who would benefit from it as well,” says Crina.
Crina helped create the soundtrack and choreographed the scheme of lightings specifically for event at Nozomi. All paints, brushes and canvas were supplied by the organisers with the cool lighting in this intimate venue adding to the creative atmosphere.
The session on Monday evening started with a short introductory talk and demonstration by Crina before the attendees were set loose to create their own “masterpieces.”
The soundtrack was mixed by Carl Roberts, who was the DJ and an organiser of the event, and was tapered to drop participants through moodscapes to unlock the passion within them.
Over the next two hours, the group dynamic allowed for frenetic and feverish painting while the creations slowly took shape. Once finished, every participant had an artistic piece painted by their own hands to take home.
“I don’t know. It just came out like this,” replied one of the participants when asked who was the monster-looking creature he had painted.
Crina, with paint all over her clothes and her face, mixed with the participants and gave them tips on further improving their work.
“I have been to Doha twice and I love the people here. They have given me such a healthy and positive feedback, I am humbled. Many people said the session exceeded their personal expectations,” says Crina.
Romainian-born Crina was a prodigy whose talent was picked up by the director of Constanta Institute of Art, Victor Radulescu who supported and cultivated her development.
Maria Cerbat became her mentor giving her the opportunity to hold her first solo exhibition at the age of 14 at Cultural House of Constanta entitled ‘The Symphony of Colours.’ This first exhibition was hailed as a resounding success and the Constanta Telegraph described her work “a passion rarely found in a person so young, she works with shocking diversity of expression and concepts of modern art.”
At 15-year-old, her second exhibition was entitled “Crina Apetrei Art” where she used shoe cream on canvas as her medium before taking her skills to the UK and Western Europe where she has been based for the past nine years.
She actively uses a wide variety of media, creating masterpieces on furniture, glasses, canvas and murals in public places while also running her own successful design company.
“I am Crina, not a model, not a star, and far from perfect. I forget names and numbers, I make wrong decisions, I do not follow a diet and often suck my paint brush in my mouth until I have a rainbow in my stomach,” says Crina.
“I consider myself a real woman with stretch-marks and scars from acting like a monkey in the park who thinks she can paint the sky in nice bright colours,” she adds, recalling her childhood days when she says she felt like the whole world around her was a canvas, ready to be painted.
Her passion for colour took her to a different world where she had all that she need and all that she had dreamed of. The joy she felt from expressing herself through art is indescribable, she says.
Crina says like any other child and a young adult she faced the constraints and difficulties in the way of her becoming an artist. Her parents and teachers would tell her to stop doing it, “what would you become”, they would tell her. “This is not your future,” they would advise her.
It made her shy; shy of expressing herself and showcasing her work to anyone until the day she realised “who will fight for me if I don’t” and “I don’t want to care what others say.” And thus began the fight.
“We all have a similar story, a point of frustration, when you feel that you lost everything, moments when you feel you are alone and sad moments when you think that no-one can understand you,” says Crina.
And then there are happy memories, smiles, love, affection, moments when you felt like you were moving mountains and creating your heaven. “This is your moment to paint what you feel,” says Crina.
Crina conducted the session and helped create the soundtrack especially for it. Right: Crina, left, says music in the background influences an artist’s work. Photos by Umer Nangiana
