Maenads 2 2005

Sorin Ilfoveanu made this painting, called Maenads 2, with confident strokes of golden paint on a black background. I can imagine him making it, stepping back, turning the canvas, letting the image come to him through the act of painting. There’s a dancer, her limbs elongated, reaching upwards between the beasts. The black ground feels primordial, like the inside of a cave. And the figures rendered in such simple, sweeping lines. Ilfoveanu is Romanian, and this scene feels like folk art meets ancient myth. His figures are stylized in a way that evokes early modernists like Matisse, but there's an urgency and sparseness to the image, maybe something that connects it with the visionary artists of today. Painters are always in conversation, looking back and leaping forward. This painting seems to be reaching for something beyond itself. What do you think it's trying to say?