Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Purchased from Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney in May 2002 (label attached verso)

EXHIBITED:
New Paintings by Aida Tomescu, Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney, 1-26 May 2002, cat. no. 2
2002 Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1 June - 21 July 2002, cat. no. 83
Indecorous Abstraction 2 - Contemporary Women Painters, Newcontemporaries, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, 1 August - 7 September 2003
Aida Tomescu: Paintings and Drawings, Australian National University, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 1 October - 8 November 2009

LITERATURE:
New Paintings by Aida Tomescu, exh. cat., Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney, 2002, cat. no. 2 (illus.)
Indecorous Abstraction 2 - Contemporary Women Painters, exh. cat., Newcontemporaries, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, 2003, p.4 (illus.)
Deborah Hart, Aida Tomescu: States of Becoming, exh. cat., Australian National University, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 2009, p.17 (illus.)


"Aida Tomescu's art is paradoxical. Like blooms that appear quite startlingly before winter's end, only to be ravaged by fronts and wind and then renewed when the season of their being arrives, Tomescu's works are in a constant state of becoming. Over the years she has developed her own distinctive, continually evolving visual language, working from one group or ensemble
of works to the next. Each series, irrespective of media, is like a new beginning; informed by previous experience and yet restlessly, determinedly eschewing the easy, known path in search of new life.

In many of her paintings one has a sense of scale and space, a feeling that there is room to breathe, to take in new possibilities. In the predominantly blue paintings there are analogies with the swell and expansiveness of the ocean tide, with light catching on water or a limitless sky on a clear day. In paintings like Albastra III 2002, there is an impression of the different layers of tides. The colour around some of the edges of the
softest greenish blue... placed against an equally subtle tone of paly icy blue. When paintings from a particular time-frame are shown alongside one another it becomes evident that a uniform idea of a particular colour is insuffi cient. Instead we need to think of variations of blue: azure, aquamarine, cornfl ower blue, cyan, cobalt, cerulean, iceberg, Prussian blue, slate, of nuances of cadmium red, Titian red, magenta or scarlet, to mention a few. The idea of expanding our vocabularies becomes a contraction to a more focussed way of looking and experiencing the work."

Deborah Hart, "Aida Tomescu: States of Becoming", in Aida Tomescu, exhibition catalogue, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 2009, pp 9; 15.