Garden with Ladder 1998

Constantin Flondor made "Garden with Ladder" with dark earthy browns and greens, and a ladder, of course. I can imagine Flondor building up this painting layer by layer, the ladder emerging as a ghostly presence amidst the foliage. What was he thinking, building a world only he could access? There's something beautifully awkward in his approach, a kind of searching that feels really familiar. The paint isn't too thick, more like stained washes, which give a sense of things hidden and revealed. I wonder if the strange compositions and surrealist themes of the Romanian avant-garde influenced this? I feel a kinship with painters everywhere who aren't afraid to embrace uncertainty, to let their ideas evolve through the very act of painting. We are all talking to each other through time. Painting is a living language, it embraces ambiguity, multiple viewpoints, and rejects definitive answers.