Few paintings are as autonomous as the work of Simona Mihaela Stoia (b. 1982). They do not visibly refer to art history, they are not supported by an immediately recognizable discourse. It seems as if she has invented her own form, with her own color world, her own compositions, her own play with textures. If we want to learn anything about these paintings, we have to live with them, look at them, try to figure out how they came to be. Knowledge about the artist's life is unnecessary. Yet such knowledge can make us feel the work in a different way, and even explain it.