Secrets of the Mountain 2010

Romul Nutiu made this painting called, "Secrets of the Mountain" with what looks like very physical strokes of paint, kind of like he’s wrestling with the image itself. The whole thing feels like it’s been built up through layers and layers of intuition. The textures are so alive, right? I mean, look at how the blues and greens swirl together, thick and opaque. It’s like you can almost feel the push and pull of the brush across the surface. And then there are those thin, scrawly black lines, like the barest bones of a drawing, holding everything together but also pushing back against the flow. If you look closely at the bottom left, where the oranges and blues meet, you can see how each mark is both separate and part of the whole. It’s like a conversation happening right there on the canvas, a kind of back-and-forth between intention and accident. It reminds me of work by Joan Mitchell, where every stroke feels like a decision, but also like a surrender to the process. For Nutiu, I think ambiguity is a gift; it’s what makes the painting keep on giving.