AIDA TOMESCU “the ear in the river and the prayer in the stone”

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.
Gustav Mahler

There is no texture in Tomescu’s paintings. These are not paintings about surface – nor are they made in the pursuit of legibility – rather, like Tomescu they aspire to clarity. There is no room for bravura in Tomescu’s performance. Such theatre would be an indulgence and certainly for her, simply too much is at stake to risk that.
 
For Aida Tomescu, work provides a metaphysical foundation that allows for evolution and the opportunity to be captive of deeper esoteric perception and most critically to discern the nature of transition.
 
For these are paintings about forms evolution, and as Mahler suggests, art consists/exists in transitions. In this sense they are less about fixity and more about freedom. Setting emotion well aside, Tomescu trusts that her deeper, anatomic ambition will facilitate the synthesis of openness and construction. The fusion or unity of these contingent states is expressed in the connections between forms.

In a recent conversation, Tomescu said that she is always prepared to “give up something good for something greater”. Look closely and you will find evidence of this exchange. This spirit became particularly apparent in the watershed triptychs Sewn onto Stones in the Sky, 2019 (Collection: Art Gallery of New South Wales) and A Long Line of Sand III, 2021 (Collection: National Gallery of Australia).
 
Both paintings, in their panoramic fields, gave her the opportunity to concentrate a new sense of expansiveness that would allow structure to emerge through the body of paint. Perhaps counter-intuitively, these grand works also delivered greater delicacy and intimacy as they invite us into the construction of the painting. This notion of coalition between elements, recalls something of Cezanne’s famous dictum that “when the colour achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also”.

In “the ear in the river and the prayer in the stone” we see the same sweeping embrace and an even more open cadence. The raw linen areas are critical to the volume and presence that the forms deliver. In a sense the openness holds the weight and influence of the pigment. There is joy and beauty in these paintings, in their resolution of dissonance and harmony.