A watercolour abstract derived from the salt flats near Sulina, where the white crust and the standing pools of brine produce a near-monochromatic landscape of extraordinary tonal subtlety. The painting moved away from representation during the making, the observed colours becoming a starting point for a colour field investigation.
The blue-white of the brine and the warm white of the dry salt are the only two values in the painting, modulated across many washes. The horizon was eventually removed, taking the landscape with it and leaving only the colour relationship.
About the artist
Catalin Vasile works across a wide range of media and scales without feeling that this breadth dilutes any particular practice — he considers the gouache studies on paper and the large oil canvases as part of the same ongoing investigation of light and surface, conducted in different registers. The studies are fast, the canvases slow; both teach him different things about the same problem.
He is based in Galați and has a particular relationship with the light and landscape of the Danube estuary — a quality of luminosity specific to that part of Romania that recurs throughout his work regardless of the subject. He accepts commissions for landscape and interior work.
