My art is inseparable from the coping after survival and from the gesture and actions of healing and from the love of animals. These transformations have creative potential. Because traumas must be transformed into steps of community building, common development and connection.
In 2003, I obtained my first degree (BA) in teaching with a minor in music. I earned my second degree, an MA, in pedagogy and Hungarian literature in 2008. I’ve been writing poems since 2010.
The post-communist Hungary, where I was born and which for a long time, up until April 2026, had been increasingly evolving into a hybrid regime, restricted artists’ self-expression and existential safety in many ways. As a result, I lost my connection to art for almost a decade and a half. For a long time, I worked with the rehabilitation of traumatized dogs. In January 2024, my husband and I emigrated to Finland.
Since then, I have been teaching myself to draw and paint. The endless pine forests, exploring the archipelago, and the atmosphere of the harbors fill me with joy. I want to leave as small ecological footprint as possible, even in my creative work. That's why oil pastels and water-soluble paints appeal to me.
It is important to support the abused so that they can become survivors from victims. It is important that they have autonomy and a future. It is important that everyone has their own dignified life.
That's why my vision is to define the pieces of reality, to put them in context, to help us face them. My vision is a society where discourse on human rights is unnecessary because free participation, choice of profession, security, equality, and work-based wages free from discrimination are fundamental and integral parts of public thinking.
The more space we give to creation and the thinking that goes with it, the more people will find words and ways to express their emotions and experiences. They will be able to broaden their horizons and demonstrate their values. Belonging to a community gives joy. Art provides affirmation, friendships and a supportive atmosphere that relieves loneliness. We all want to belong to others. We want recognition. A life full of dignity and opportunities.
I think these are the building blocks of healthy personality development and, indirectly, of societies becoming adults and responsible. I would like to encourage and support my fellow women by sharing my story. To put the importance of women's and animal rights into discourse.
Unity
Fragments…
I really loved painting this piece of mine, it was made in April 2026. At a time when I was unable to tear myself away from the news of the Hungarian elections more than 2000 km away from our home in Finland. On April 12, 2026, the abusive Orbán regime, operating like a mafia, fell. The very thing we had fled from. On that day, exceptionally, I was not ashamed of being Hungarian.
“The unification of the nation”… This expression has been ringing in my ears ever since. After the fallen prime minister called Hungarian citizens traitors who fled abroad from the waves of violence and the cost-of-living crisis in Hungary. After, following a Nazi pattern, he dehumanized Hungarian citizens who disagreed with his rampage and believed in European values, literally calling them vermin. It is over. How many things could have been different if… I feel emptiness and sadness.
I paint my picture. I hide behind its colors. In the golden ochre, the olive green and the radiant grass green I find peace. Temporarily. For a few moments at a time. I lose myself in the pigment reactions of water-dissolved wax pastel. I quietly watch how the paper forms an alliance with the dissolving layers. The pigments drift with the water. Just as I myself often only drift along with the time of my life. I often think about how I have no control over every event in my life, yet looking back afterward, something still seems to indicate a direction; in the same way, a story emerges from how the forms and beings seek connection, organization and network through their contour lines, sometimes beyond them. And how they build themselves.
I do not feel myself part of Hungarian society. More precisely, I do not want to be part of a society which, regardless of the now-collapsing hybrid regime, has for decades kept producing newer and newer dictators for itself through the practice of silence, cover-ups, looking away and maintaining corruption, while neglecting self-reflection. Why? Because suffering while pointing at others is simpler than taking responsibility. I should know. For years I have been working on overcoming these toxic, learned patterns. So I am convinced that political regime change requires more than simply drawing two Xs on a ballot paper…
I marvel at the unity of my painted beings and their partly abstract forest. How simple this is. Animals and plants do not cast one another out on the basis of citizenship. Among them, I always feel at home as a simple human being.