Hilos de Agua, Squares Within a Grid, 2 1999

Cesar Paternosto made this painting, Hilos de Agua, Squares Within a Grid, 2, as part of his ongoing exploration into geometric abstraction. I'm immediately drawn to the delicate pencil lines. It must have been a really meditative, almost like a dance on the canvas. A dance between intuition and geometry! I can see him, pencil in hand, stepping back, squinting, deciding where the next line goes. It's like he’s carving out these quiet little worlds with each square. It’s interesting how these squares interact, overlapping and creating new shapes and spaces. There's a tension there, a kind of quiet energy. You could say he’s in conversation with Sol LeWitt or Agnes Martin, but he’s also bringing his own South American perspective to it. Artists like Paternosto remind me that painting is never really done, it's just a moment in an ongoing conversation, a way of thinking and feeling our way through the world.