Like the Summer Rain

A ribbon of orange fire cuts across the middle of this canvas, twisting upward like flame or a burst of energy caught mid-motion. Andrada Anghel builds the painting from bold contrasts: the warm orange and yellow streaks collide with cool blues and grays, while patches of white sit thick and textured, as if the paint was pushed around with a knife. Small flecks of pink and green pop up near the bottom, adding little sparks of color to an otherwise stormy scene.

The title, "Like the Summer Rain," gives a hint about what Anghel had in mind. This is abstract work, so there is no clear subject to point to, but the loose, flowing shapes and the mix of warm and cool tones suggest the feeling of a sudden downpour on a hot day, when the sky turns dark and the air still holds heat. Anghel is a contemporary Romanian painter known for her large expressive abstracts, and this piece shows her interest in movement and emotion over any exact picture of the world. Rather than telling you what to see, she leaves room for you to bring your own weather to it.