Balcic Hills 

Curator: I'm immediately struck by the almost bleached-out quality of this painting, a muted palette under a glaring sun. Editor: Indeed, "Balcic Hills" captures a striking sense of place through Darascu's post-impressionist lens. It’s rendered in oil paint, though its precise creation date remains unconfirmed. It's so evocative, isn't it? You can almost feel the heat radiating from the canvas. Curator: Absolutely, I love the way Darascu plays with texture here, that rough impasto on the hillsides versus the smoother application in the sky, it gives everything a kind of shimmering vitality. Almost dreamlike, if you ask me. Editor: Notice how Darascu constructs the scene. The composition is skillfully divided into distinct zones—the imposing, almost oppressive hill to the left, juxtaposed with the clustered buildings. This tension gives it a narrative pull. What’s interesting, however, is how that clear-cut compositional line still manages to deliver some serenity to the viewer. It provides a counter-tension that is somewhat paradoxical. Curator: Right, and it’s a serenity I almost feel homesick for. I remember those childhood summer days. Editor: His strategic deployment of realism serves to amplify, rather than dilute, the painting's emotional resonance. Each building, and every contour in the terrain are reduced to its essence. It looks like he wants to capture not what we see, but what we *remember* seeing. It evokes our sensory perception. Curator: Precisely, that feeling of sun-baked earth, of whitewashed walls… it hits some primal, sun-drenched nerve in me. Perhaps a visual translation of saudade, that particularly exquisite ache of longing and nostalgia. Editor: "Balcic Hills," through its careful design and nuanced brushwork, allows us to look again at this type of post-impressionistic cityscapes and see the structural artistry that makes it work, in feeling if not in literal fact. Curator: And that’s why I return to it – because it doesn't just depict a scene, but evokes a deeply felt human response.