A watercolour made at the Black Sea shore in September when seagrass washes up in thick drifts on the beach and the light catches its translucent amber at a low angle. The subject is not particularly dramatic; its interest is entirely in the quality of the light and the texture of the organic material.
Wet-into-wet for the water and wet-on-dry for the seagrass, the contrasting handling distinguishing the two elements without the need for hard outlines. The painting was made in a single session of approximately two hours.
About the artist
Laurentiu Marin's practice divides between two poles he considers complementary rather than contradictory: realist paintings of specific industrial and urban subjects, rendered with high fidelity to surface and material, and minimalist works that strip the pictorial field to a single compositional proposition. Both modes share the same underlying interest in how much information a painting needs.
He trained as an engineer before taking up painting, and that background is visible in the precision of his pictorial decisions — nothing is placed without a reason, and the reason is always structural rather than decorative. He is based in Pitești and takes commissions for industrial and architectural portraits.
