Eden Garden III 2005

Ion Pantilie's "Eden Garden III" is made with confident strokes of paint, like a dance of blue and yellow. Imagine Pantilie, brush in hand, coaxing these colours into existence. The blue streaks pull your eye diagonally across the canvas, a swift, almost breezy gesture, while the yellow lingers at the edges, like sunlight. I'm picturing how the canvas feels under the brush – the slight resistance, the give and take. The paint isn't thick, more like a stain, allowing the surface beneath to peek through. It makes me think of Joan Mitchell's landscapes—that same sense of capturing a fleeting moment, a memory of a place. Pantilie invites us into his own Eden, not a literal depiction, but a feeling, an impression. It's a reminder that painting is a conversation across time, where one artist responds to another, building on what came before, and adding their own voice to the mix. A garden seen through somebody else's eyes.