A realist painting of an old house in northern Oltenia, half-consumed by Virginia creeper that has reached the roofline and begun to descend the chimney stack. The subject was chosen for its slightly disquieting quality — something patient and inevitable in the way the plant takes the building.
The painting was made over two visits separated by three weeks in autumn, so the leaves changed colour between sessions. Both states are present in the final work — a natural rather than a invented surrealism.
About the artist
Ioana Barbu's paintings combine the precision of realist technique with subjects and situations that cannot exist — architecture that opens onto impossible spaces, figures that cast the wrong shadows, rooms that contain more than their dimensions allow. She builds this pictorial logic carefully and with deliberate slowness, which is partly why the impossible elements feel grounded rather than theatrical.
She studied at the National University of Arts in Bucharest and has been working in surrealist modes for over a decade, developing a visual language that is entirely her own. She accepts commissions from collectors comfortable with giving her significant creative freedom.
