Cora Silvestru is an illustrator & digital designer born in Romania working primarily with watercolours, inks and lino prints.
Growing up in the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca, Cora’s first encounters with art were within her family home which welcomed diverse groups of visiting artists and intellectuals.
Her dream as a child was to become a fashion designer and she spent years drawing with that goal in mind. However, when she immigrated to Canada in 2002 at the age of 15, the transition revealed the challenges of that competitive professional reality and led to a yearning for the visual arts.
At 17 she was accepted at Bealart Secondary, a unique art program that follows a 3-year art college curriculum. She specialized in printmaking and photography.
After graduating she relocated to coastal British Columbia, a move which had a profound impact on her relationship with the land and her art. You can see this reflected in her exploration of themes around feminine identity and the ever-present elements of nature and organic geometry.
She has been a Vancouver Island resident since 2021 and is particularly honoured to be working and creating on the Unceded Traditional Territory of the K’ómoks First Nation.
