Underground Vegetal Structure XXV 1988

Romul Nutiu made this painting called Underground Vegetal Structure XXV with oil on canvas, and when I look at it, I get a feeling for the making. The painting seems to come into being through a struggle, a shift and an emergence through trial, error, and intuition. I bet Nutiu worked hard at it, maybe wiping things away, adding, and then taking away again. Look at those dominant gestural marks and the earthy color palette, the black, whites and browns plus the odd splash of red. I can almost feel the push and pull of the brush against the canvas. I wonder what Nutiu was thinking about when he made it? Was he thinking about landscape or just the material of the paint itself? There is a feeling of ambiguity here, which means we can come up with our own readings. All artists are in dialogue with one another across time, building on each other's experiments, failures, and discoveries, so this painting feels like a conversation.