"My name is Adrian... I am 16 and a half years old. I am a student in the second year at a vocational school in Galati, Romania. I live in an orphanage. I was born in a poor family in the winter of 1986 on the 1st of December. After that my mother and my father brought into the world two more brothers, Valentin (15 years old) and Ionut (13 years old).

I have two half sisters from my mother’s previous marriage and four half brothers from my father’s previous marriage. My father died in the year of 1995 and then we couldn’t pay our bills so we were thrown out of our apartment.

Because we had no place to stay we went with our mother to be our grandmother’s guests and we were not welcome there. In January of 1998, having a bitter life at home, we decided that it would be better if we integrated ourselves into an orphanage in Galati where the three of us live today.

We know our mother lives with her sister and we see her very seldom. I cannot blame her for who she is. In the past my mother has worked but now she can not find a job. Our mother can not help us too much because she can hardly support herself, so I try and manage myself.

Not at last, I want to dedicate my life to painting. This is the reason why I am a member of the Art Oasis Project. The death of my father took away my inspiration to draw, but I didn’t give in and I continued on my own until God put his hand on my head, so to speak.

Towards the lady teachers I feel a special affection because I follow their advice in art, which makes me feel like a totally different person. I cannot describe the feeling that I have when I start a new work. I can say about my painting that it is the expression of my inner state, the inspiration comes from somewhere behind my eyes, from inside of me and less from what surrounds me.

My feelings towards Miss Camelia are good and I hope that they will always stay the same. I consider Kay, the sponsor of this program, as a woman with a good soul because she could think of us from America, in other words, she thought of us without even knowing us.