Painted at noon in full summer sun on a lavender farm in Moldova — conditions that most landscape painters avoid for the flatness they impose on colour and shadow. The challenge was exactly what attracted the painter to the subject: working honestly with a difficult light rather than waiting for the golden hours.
The purple of the lavender shifts considerably across the canvas, from blue-violet in the parts closest to the viewer to a grey-green in the most distant rows, a truthful record of how atmosphere and distance affect a single saturated hue.
About the artist
Maria Florescu's paintings are records of specific places at specific times of day — not idealised landscapes but faithful witnesses to the light as it actually fell on a particular morning, a particular field, a particular bend in the river. She works on location first, completing canvases in the studio with plein air notes close at hand.
She is based in Iași and exhibits across eastern Romania. Her gouache studies are made as standalone works, not preparatory sketches — small, immediate, made while waiting for the light to settle before the large canvas begins. She accepts commissions and is willing to paint locations of personal significance to clients.
