"I define my style as fantastic realism, because painting only the real thing is less interesting for me. I always want to add something fantastic, something that is impossible to exist in the real world. I try to combine different objects - watches, books, birds, bird feathers, which have a symbolic meaning. In practice, what is obtained is a picture painted in a realistic way, technically according to all the rules of light and shadow, with all realistic proportions. But the combination of all the elements is completely impossible, completely unrealistic”.

This is how the Bulgarian artist in Montreal Daniela Zekina describes her works. She arrived there in 1993, a difficult year for Bulgaria, with her husband - the artist Petar Boyadzhiev, and their two children - 2 and 6 years old. Supposedly for a while, but 28 years have passed imperceptibly since then.

Getting started was difficult because she had to learn French on the go. On the other hand, the language of art does not recognize barriers, and the world in which she found herself was wide open to the richness of different cultures. Daniela comes from Bulgaria with the knowledge she received at the National School of Fine Arts, and then at the National Academy of Arts, majoring in Illustration. In her biography she has an invaluable award from 1989 from the House of Arts for Children in Sofia for her illustrations to the book "Unicorn" by Irmelin Sandman Lilius. Later, painting invaded her life. And at the centre of each of her stories is invariably the woman:

"I'm trying to show what's going on in the imagination, in the invisible world that exists inside us. The ideas and things a woman loves and wants to present to the outside world. That's why I always start from one face or one female image, trying to find additional elements that show what is happening inside the mind, in the imagination”.

Daniela Zekina's work as an illustrator encourages her to experiment with different techniques and styles in order to achieve that harmony with the text that makes our childhood books even more beloved and unforgettable. She paints with ink and pen, engraving, watercolours, tempera and coloured pencils, makes combinations between drawing and painting, collages… But how are her real-unreal images filled with tenderness and deep philosophy born?

"It's like asking a poet how his or her poem was born. For me, the paintings I make are visual poetry. In practice, I try to tell a small poem with the means of visual language - with colours, shapes, different perceptions that come from the composition of the picture, the inner state of the character I create," says Daniela.

She loves to indulge in her art in the morning when the light is brighter and the clock gently measures the time before the hustle and bustle of the new day invades the house. The harsh Montreal winter may be raging outside, but her atelier is warm and cosy. This is the time when the artist is alone with herself, new images and new compositions are born, she says.

The two areas in which Daniela Zekina works - painting and illustration - are quite different and each of them has its own challenges. If painting gives freedom to the imagination and techniques, the illustration puts an artist in a certain framework.

“In illustration, great care must be taken for all the details that are in the text, because the children's audience notices even the slightest discrepancy. This is a job that requires a lot of preparation, especially when it comes to historical illustrations where one needs to create a world that is real enough, albeit fabulous.”

Although she lives far from Bulgaria, Daniela Zekina constantly keeps alive her relationship with her homeland. She returns to Sofia every year - to present a joint exhibition with her husband or just to meet relatives and friends.

English version Rositsa Petkova