Sewn onto stones in the sky

Aida Tomescu is celebrated for her richly layered paintings, built gradually from intensely worked passages of pigment and constant editing through erasure. Scraping back and often reworking the entire canvas over time, her paintings are remarkably textured and luminous. Some are inscribed with text or symbols, suggesting references beyond the material and gesture. This gives a timeless quality to her work, which is as informed by historical painting practices, poetry and literature as it is by the language of contemporary abstraction.

'Sewn onto stones in the sky' is the most ambitious painting in scale that Tomescu has yet undertaken. The triptych's poetic foundation resides with the verses of Paul Celan, from where the work takes its title. Films of white pigment evolve in synchronicity with vibrant rhythmic planes of deep cadmium maroon, alizarin crimson and cobalt violet. These hues are punctuated by underlayers of blushing reds, suggestive of the radiant paintings of the Pre-Renaissance and Renaissance Italian painters Tomescu studies intimately, particularly Giotto, Piero della Francesca and Titian.