“Tree Spirit,” originally an acrylic painting from Boglarka Pataki-Barothi, was chosen by festival organizers to represent the 2015 edition of the landmark Mill Valley event, set for September 19-20 in Old Mill Park.
Boglarka Pataki-Barothi is currently showing the painting, dubbed “Tree Spirit” – appropriately so given the festival’s home in a grove of redwood trees – in a juried exhibition at San Luis Obispo Museum of Art’s “Brushstrokes 2015.”
“All the beautiful and very precious trees that surround us, are alive,” Pataki-Barothi says of her painting. “It seems like they all have a shy little fragile spirit living in them peeking out to look down on us with motherly love and care for our well being. We should respect them as real living beings. I hope my painting will carry on this message.”
Boglarka Pataki-Barothi was born in Transylvania, Romania. With an artist father, art and creativity were part of her everyday life. She studied traditional art for more than nine years and received her BFA with a major in Textile Arts from “Ioan Andreescu” Academy of Visual Arts, Cluj Napoca, Romania. She finds inspiration and beauty all around – in people, nature and living. Tribal arts, the Art Nouveau period, fairy tales and children books have also had a great influence on her artworks. The media she mostly enjoys working with, are watercolors, colored pencils, graphite pencils, markers and acrylics on paper or canvas. Her paint style is decorative with simplified shapes, lines, dots and other details.