The allure of nature: How Park City captivated an international artist

Park City artist Alexandra Jicol. Photo: Alexandra Jicol

From Brussels to Bora Bora, Alexandra Jicol finds her muse in Park City's mountains

By Kirsten Kohlwey, Neighbors of Park City

Park City has enchanted yet another artist, Alexandra Jicol. She first traveled here upon the invitation of some friends in 2020. After returning several times, she decided to move to Park City. She is an international artist from Romania who has spent much time in Belgium, France, Los Angeles, Bora Bora, Israel, Guam, Japan and many other places. 

Alexandra grew up spending her vacations with her grandfather in the mountains of Romania. Her grandfather was a multi-talented artist who loved painting naïve art and realistic scenes. Early on, Alexandra chose her path, preferring bright colors and a more abstract style. 

A Belgian art collector discovered her in Romania when she was 18 years old and, together with a group of art collectors, offered her a contract to work in Belgium, complete with a studio and a carte blanche to buy all the art supplies she needed. It was the opportunity of her dreams, and she took it. 

Alexandra became so grateful and immersed in her art that she barely took time to eat and sleep. A constant stream of collectors visited her studio and bought her paintings almost before the paint had dried. Photos don’t capture the true nature of her artwork. Many of her paintings have up to 25 layers of paint, making them three-dimensional and about an inch thick. 

She learned the art of making paper from natural fibers and soil in Japan. Alexandra is intimately connected to her surroundings. From the tree-covered mountains in Park City to her childhood, which was intimately close to nature, the earth floods her mind. The juxtaposition of the tall, green mountains and the flat desert areas with the incredible reflections in the sky drew her to Park City.

In 2019 she was able to showcase her art in an exhibit called “Around the World From the Source Back To The Source” in Romania. The colors in her artwork are bright and pure, like the colors she saw in the Bora Bora and Guam flora. This was the first time she could display her art in her home country. Her mother was there to see what her daughter had accomplished. 

Alexandra is a born artist. She was drawn back to it whenever she tried to follow a different path. Her need to create flows through her being, and her art is instinctive and subliminal. She says, “Being a creative, as a way of living, is exhausting. It’s like having a passionate love affair 24 hours a day.” 

Her paintings are influenced by her life experiences. When she wasn’t in the mountains, she attended school in Bucharest, where her mother worked at the television station. During this part of her life, she experienced life under communism. When the protest marches occurred, she drew over a picture of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu that her brother carried during the revolution, which eventually resulted in the end of the communist regime in 1989. A photograph of her brother with the painting went around the world and is a constant reminder of what she went through to gain her freedom. 

During the pandemic, she felt the need to travel even more than ever to prove that she still had her freedom. Freedom is represented in most of her paintings. The paintings do not have limits; infinite lines keep going. The bold colors portray the intensity of life. Her paintings reflect humans’ dreams to explore their capacity to dream, discover their abilities to perceive the world around them and live in multidimensional space.