Unbroken — A Retrospective
- Alexandra Andreica
- Feb 14
- 2 min read
A few months after the "Unbroken" exhibition, I felt the need to return to the paintings... Not as an artist presenting work, but as a woman searching for strength.
One of the angels now hangs in my dining room. I pass it every day. It reminds me of something simple and powerful: I am still here. I did not quit. I did not disappear. I kept showing up, in my art, in my work, in my life, in motherhood, in love, in uncertainty, in the quiet battles no one sees.
Resilience is often misunderstood. It is not always loud. It is not always heroic. Sometimes strength is simply this: I am still here.
The Unbroken exhibition was born from that quiet endurance. The angel figures were never meant to be decorative symbols of perfection. They are not distant, heavenly beings untouched by struggle. They are suspended between vulnerability and defiance, bodies exposed, wings extended not in flight, but in protection. They represent the human condition more than the divine. They represent survival.
The drips, the raw palette-knife marks, the tension between softness and force, these are not stylistic accidents. They mirror chaos, emotion, and the imperfect reality we move through daily. And yet, each figure remains upright, luminous, present. Unbroken does not mean untouched. It means intact despite everything.
Among all the works in the exhibition, one piece stands apart.
It is not for sale. It probably it will never be.
The painting was inspired by a photograph taken while he was ill. In that moment, I saw something I had never fully understood before, how vulnerable a child can be, and at the same time, how instinctively resilient. He was fragile. He was tired. But he was not defeated. Children do not intellectualize recovery. They simply move toward healing. They endure without drama. They rest. They rise again.
In that moment, I saw the duality of childhood: delicacy and quiet endurance existing side by side. I wanted to capture that tension, the softness of youth and the strength that lives beneath it.
“Unbroken” became one of the most personal paintings I have ever created. It is not about spectacle. It is about tenderness. It is about the kind of strength that does not need to prove itself.
Looking back now, I see that the exhibition was not about perfection or transcendence. It was about endurance. There are days when I feel like I am failing at everything, as an artist, as a woman, as someone trying to build something meaningful. And then I look at these paintings, and they remind me: Strength is not the absence of doubt. It is showing up anyway.
The angels were never above the struggle. They were inside it.
Just like me.
I am still here. And sometimes, that is enough.
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