A square canvas in which a figure stands in a landscape that appears entirely normal except that the sky is the wrong colour — a deep, warm red that corresponds to no natural light condition, the colour of a sky in a dream. The figure shows no awareness of the anomaly.
Acrylic suited the opacity the red sky required. Building the colour over several layers kept it from looking applied or artificial, each layer contributing to the sense that the red is the sky's own temperature rather than a paint choice. The landscape beneath is handled with realist care.
About the artist
Oana Petrescu uses the transparency of watercolour to generate ambiguity — the layered washes allow her surrealist imagery to feel genuinely uncertain rather than arbitrarily strange. Her paintings often depict landscapes in which something is slightly wrong: a horizon at the wrong height, a building casting a shadow in the wrong direction, water that flows upward.
She studied in Bucharest and continued in Barcelona, where the Spanish surrealist tradition was a significant influence. She is now based in Oradea, working in a studio she describes as too small and too cold — conditions she considers productive. She does not accept commissions.
