Alisia Prifti

You were born in Albania and later studied Graphic Design at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. How have these different cultural environments influenced your visual language and the way you approach creativity?

Growing up in Albania shaped my appreciation for culture, history, and visual storytelling. It’s a country with a rich cultural heritage, strong traditions, and diverse landscapes, and I think being surrounded by those influences made me more attentive to detail and the stories that visuals can communicate.

Living in Romania introduced me to a different cultural environment and artistic perspective. Experiencing another country’s traditions, architecture, and creative scene broadened the way I looked at visual expression. However, it wasn’t until I moved to Bucharest to study that I fully immersed myself in graphic design. That experience marked a turning point in my creative journey, shifting my focus from painting to design and changing the way I approached creativity—not only as a form of personal expression but also as a way to communicate ideas clearly and solve visual problems.

Alisia Prifti | Venezia | 2022

What initially drew you to graphic design, and at what point did painting become an important part of your creative practice?

Painting came first. It was my earliest way of expressing ideas and exploring color, composition, and emotion. As I continued my studies, I became increasingly interested in graphic design because it combined creativity with communication and problem-solving. Over time, my focus naturally shifted toward design, which is now my main active practice, while painting remains an important part of how I developed as a visual thinker.

Alisia Prifti | Four Seasons | 2023

Your professional design work is based on clarity, structure, and the simplification of complex ideas, while your paintings appear much more intuitive and spontaneous. How do you navigate between these two different modes of creating?

For me, they were never completely separate. Painting taught me to trust intuition and experiment, while graphic design taught me how to communicate with intuition and clarity.

Although I don’t paint much anymore, I still carry that balance into my design work—I like to combine structure with curiosity and leave room for creative exploration within clear framework, while always aiming to solve problems.

Alisia Prifti | Four Seasons | 2023

Do you feel that your background in graphic design influences the way you construct a painting, particularly in terms of composition, balance, color, and negative space?

Definitely. Even when I was painting, I naturally thought about composition, balance, and the relationship between forms. Design strengthened my awareness of visual hierarchy and negative space, and those principles influenced how I approached a canvas, even if the process itself was more intuitive.

Alisia Prifti | Four Seasons | 2023

Your abstract works often contain flowing, almost organic movements of color. Are these forms connected to particular emotions, memories, natural phenomena, or are they primarily discovered through the painting process itself?

They were usually discovered during the painting process rather than planned in advance. I wasn’t trying to represent a specific place or emotion. Instead, I allowed the forms to develop organically, responding to color, movement, and the interaction between different elements until the composition felt balanced.

When you begin a new artwork, do you usually start with a clear concept or visual structure, as you might in design, or do you allow the image to emerge gradually through experimentation?

With painting, I preferred to let the image emerge gradually through experimentation. In contrast, graphic design usually starts with a clear objective and a problem to solve. I enjoy that difference, although today I primarily work within the design process.

Alisia Prifti | Four Seasons | 2023

Looking ahead, are you interested in bringing your design and fine-art practices even closer together, and what new subjects, techniques, or formats would you like to explore next?

At the moment, my main focus is graphic design. I’m particularly interested in developing my work in branding and visual identity while continuing to explore how artistic thinking can strengthen design. I don’t see painting as a separate career path right now, but I’m grateful for how it shaped my creative perspective and continues to influence the way I approach visual work.