My name is Iustin Grancea. Pronounced (you•steen). I was born in a Transylvanian town called Cluj-Napoca in Romania. At the age of two, my parents and I moved to Hungary. There I attended a British-Magyar pre-school in Budapest. There English was one of my first languages along with Romanian and Hungarian. Unfortunately, since then I have forgotten the latter. At the age of about five, I moved to Los Angeles where I grew up. Reflecting back, I think I was heavily influenced by moving around at a young age and experiencing differing customs and languages. It is also likely that this fostered what later would develop into an intense and lifelong fascination with the study of cultures and history. After attending high school in the Pacific Palisades, I ended up in the United Kingdom working towards a BA at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). However, after some adolescent angst mixed with financial complications and much to my parent’s dismay, I eventually dropped out and moved back to Los Angeles. While back home I had the chance to visit the Broad with some friends. There for the first time, I saw in person some works by Julian Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Cy Twombly, to name a few. It was a sensory shock that left a lasting imprint and desire within me that eventually put me on the path to becoming a visual artist.

I frequently get asked about my approach and inspirations. If I am earnest, I find this can be a challenging question to answer. I believe that if you are perceptive and open, anything can lend itself a potential source of inspiration. Whether it be a piece of music, an ancient clay cylinder seal, how someone is dressed, or even how a wave pummels you into the sand. It’s all useful. Most ideas come from deep within, one could say the subconscious. I find these ideas usually come to me somewhat fully formed in my mind just before falling asleep, in a limbo state between awake and at rest. The challenge then becomes adapting and discovering where the painting wants to go while keeping to the original vision. I have also realized that when a feeling of hopelessness for lack of a better word or the thought that I am unable to complete my vision pops up, I just need to press on regardless of my feelings. I have found that is when I generally produce some of my best work. One of the newest abstract collections I am producing called the Terran Project involves mixing soil with heavy acrylic and working it on the canvas into shapes with almost topographical features. Despite having made several in this series so far, I still encountered that feeling of being out of my comfort zone. At this point, I almost anticipate and welcome this as a sign that I’m on the right track. I first got the idea for the Terran Project from watching a documentary by Werner Herzog called Into The Inferno. It’s a film about volcanism and its impact on human societies. It sent me down an unexpected path of experimentation and discovery. However idiosyncratic, I believe one of the chief reasons we create art is an eternal search for truth. Whether that be personal, historical, or scientific truth. Ultimately we are explorers and in seeking within ourselves we shed light on the nature of our existence. That is something I wish to share and inspire others to engage in.