Route of the Snail 2010

Here's Romul Nutiu's 'Route of the Snail', an abstract painting dominated by gestural marks in a palette of greens, greys, and just a touch of red. Imagine Nutiu building the painting up, layer by layer, maybe wiping away, maybe adding more, going with the flow. I'm feeling how Nutiu’s process might have been, the painting evolving through trial and error and intuition. The paint is applied thinly in washes, giving the work a fluid, translucent quality like you can see into it, but there are also drips, giving it a sense of gravity, almost like a plant reaching down with its roots to the earth. Look at how the brushstrokes coalesce, like the swirl of currents in water. I think of Helen Frankenthaler, how one artist's innovations can ripple across generations, and the way painters are in an ongoing conversation, inspiring each other's creativity. Artists, snails... we're all on a route! Painting embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple readings and interpretations over time.