Bread 1976

Horia Bernea made this painting called "Bread" with oil on canvas. I can feel him working at this painting. The way he’s dabbed these flecks of red all over the canvas makes me imagine he was thinking a lot about surface, the surface of the bread, the surface of the world around it. I like to think he was painting on a day when it was drizzling, because those little red dots look like rain! There’s something so tender about the way he built up the bread, like he was molding it with his hands. He’s layering all sorts of colors, cream, yellow, and a little black in there too. I can see that he’s looking at folks like Chardin and other painters who take everyday life as a subject. I get the sense that Bernea is in conversation with the work of those earlier artists, but he’s turning it into something of his own. Painting is a form of conversation like that. It’s never one voice alone, we’re always building on what came before. I think there's something so generous and open-ended about that.