"“The Distance Between Us”" Painting

“I paint because I have reached the things I want to say.”

I discovered painting too late to take it lightly.

I am a self-taught painter and a professional engineer. I came to painting out of a need to understand and construct the image. I have developed my practice independently, but not without guidance: I have studied, sought out teachers, and experimented continuously, trying to discover not only a visual language, but also the reasons why a painting needs to exist.

At 63, I no longer paint to prove that I can become a painter. I paint because I have reached the things I want to say. Some things do not have to be started early in order to become essential.

My paintings explore fragility, tension, the traces left by time, and the way human beings try to remain whole when life fractures them. I am interested in what remains when appearances begin to fall away: vulnerability, memory, absence, rupture, and the struggle to continue.

I work primarily in acrylic, using impasto and relief to make the physical surface of the painting part of its meaning. I am not interested only in what an image represents, but also in what the material from which it is made can communicate.

I do not participate in exhibition openings, and I have no desire to build my artistic path around them. This is a conscious choice, not an absence. I have a different approach: I prefer my work to find its viewers through the image itself, through its story, and through the direct dialogue that a painting can create with the person looking at it.

For me, painting is neither a social stage nor a demonstration of status. It is a way of thinking and, ultimately, a way of saying what words can no longer express.

Stefan Popescu