Despite having her paintings displayed in major collections across Australia and achieving considerable commercial success with works selling for up to $300,000, abstract painter Aida Tomescu remains largely unknown to the general public. The 70-year-old Romanian-born artist, who has called Sydney home for 45 years, represents one of Australia's most accomplished living painters yet lacks the household recognition that typically accompanies such artistic achievement.
Tomescu's journey to Australia began in 1979 when she fled Communist Romania at age 23. After spending a year in Greece teaching herself English through dictionaries and novels, she arrived in Sydney thanks to the sponsorship of a fellow Romanian stranger living in Liverpool. Her escape from a regime where she "did not speak for 23 years" has perhaps contributed to her current eloquence and passion for discussion about her craft.
The artist's loquaciousness is legendary among those who know her work. When podcaster Maria Stoljar arrived for what was supposed to be a one-hour interview in 2017, she found herself still there eight hours later, captivated by Tomescu's precise language and references to masters like Chopin, Messiaen, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Cézanne, and Titian. Tomescu speaks with such intellectual depth that visitors to her studio could listen for hours to her mellifluous Eastern European accent.
This November marks a significant milestone for Tomescu as she prepares for her first Sydney exhibition in three years at Fox Jensen Gallery in Alexandria. The show, opening November 15th, will feature more than a dozen paintings, including three towering triptychs, at least two similarly scaled diptychs, and five smaller works. It represents only the second solo exhibition since the gallery reopened in expanded new premises and marks the first show in the new space dedicated to an Australian artist at a venue primarily focused on international artists.
Gallery co-owner Andrew Jensen believes Tomescu's work transcends contemporary art trends. "Her work transcends the vitiating forces of fashion and dispenses with the current allure for political science 101 that grips so much of what is made today," Jensen explains. He argues that like great music and poetry, Tomescu's paintings leave political maneuvering to others, instead leveraging "deep knowledge and consequential feeling for poetry, literature and music."
With more than 40 solo exhibitions to her name, Tomescu's work appears in most major public collections and many private collections nationwide. She has also shown internationally through Flowers Gallery, which has presented her work at New York's Armory print fair, as well as in London and Hong Kong. The commercial value of her large canvases, ranging from $100,000 to $300,000, reflects her standing in the art world.
Despite these impressive credentials, Tomescu's relative anonymity puzzles many in the art world. While she won a suite of prestigious Art Gallery of NSW prizes including the Sulman, Wynne, and Dobell awards, these victories occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Unlike many emerging artists, she has yet to publish a monograph, and despite successful solo shows at regional venues like Orange Regional Gallery and Canberra's Drill Hall, major state and national institutions have not yet given her a retrospective.
This obscurity may reflect broader challenges facing older artists in a culture constantly seeking novelty, particularly abstract painters who remain less popular than figurative artists in Australia. Additionally, Tomescu's identity as someone who is "of here but also, very much, of elsewhere" may contribute to her unique position in Australian art. As she puts it, "I'm a Romanian-born artist who turned into an Australian painter."
Visiting Tomescu's Rosebery studio provides an overwhelming sensory experience. The glorious aroma of wet paint fills the air while massive canvases covered in thick red and white paint, with touches of yellow and other hues, line the walls. The works feature drips, splotches, accidents, and areas with minimal paint application, each piece both similar to and different from its neighbors.
Tomescu's artistic process defies easy assumptions about abstract expressionism. While her works might suggest rapid, emotional execution, she actually builds them painstakingly over many years through a methodical process of painting, scraping off paint, and painting again. She works on multiple pieces simultaneously, constantly seeking connections between them, allowing the paintings to tell her when they reach completion.
Contrary to viewers' interpretations, Tomescu insists her work is not emotionally driven. "People relate to red as a color of anger or passion, they see many things in red but it will never be that for me," she explains. "It's similar to music. Music is not about emotions but it amplifies the emotion in us." She draws inspiration from sources like composer Messiaen for her current exhibition, but emphasizes that art must travel away from the artist's private life to become something with its own identity.
Health concerns have forced changes to Tomescu's once-intensive work habits. She previously painted through the night without protective equipment while chain-smoking, but illness forced her to adopt masks, gloves, barrier cream, and better ventilation. She's also learning to take days off, though this doesn't come naturally. After major exhibitions, she recovers by traveling to Europe to revisit favorite works at the Louvre, London's National Gallery, and Venice, where she particularly admires Titian's masterpieces.
Tomescu's personal history deeply influences her artistic development. Her mother Ecaterina arrived in Sydney for a six-month visit in 1987 and never left, living with her daughter until her death in 2010 just shy of her 83rd birthday. Growing up in Communist Romania, young Aida was frequently sent to stay with her grandmother in Constanta on the Black Sea, where without toys or other children, she was given sketching tasks that sparked her artistic interest.
Her formal artistic education began at age 10 with art school alongside regular schooling, culminating in a 1977 diploma from Bucharest's Institute of Fine Arts. There she learned to paint using plaster casts and life models in a rigorous, disciplined program she credits as the foundation of her current practice. "I will be forever grateful for the Romanian education system of that time, for being so rigorous and disciplined," she reflects.
After arriving in Australia, Tomescu completed a postgraduate diploma while working for the Department of Immigration and later teaching at the National Art School. She maintained her artistic practice throughout, and six years after arrival, had saved enough to purchase her first apartment—not for financial reasons, but because unlike in Europe, renting in Australia could lead to eviction that would disrupt her studio time.
Success brought unexpected challenges for Tomescu. Successful exhibitions at Coventry Gallery in Paddington during the late 1980s elevated her status but paradoxically left her depressed. "Everything changed around me. People thought I would change, but I didn't," she recalls. She began questioning what motivated people to buy her work, concluding that "success is better for the family and friends of artists than for the artists themselves."
Despite philosophical reservations about success, financial stability has allowed Tomescu to live solely from her art for more than two decades. She's known for being demanding with dealers, sometimes leading to professional separations she approaches with iron will. "Relationships end when they dispense with dialogue, when a gallery excludes the artist's views, when they no longer share the same values," she explains. "The problem for most artists is not that they are too difficult, it's that they are too trusting."
Tomescu purchased her current studio in 2018, partly for its four-meter-high ceilings that accommodate her large-scale works. Interestingly, upon moving in, instead of immediately setting up for large paintings, she found herself sitting on the floor among moving boxes, creating smaller works. It took more than six months before she began ordering larger canvases again.
Gallery owner Jensen sees Tomescu's increasing scale as reflecting both her bigger studio and her adopted homeland. "I can't imagine if she was still in Romania that she'd be painting six-meter triptychs," he observes. "The tone and chromatic intensity is probably something that's been quietly infected by being in Australia, too."
For Tomescu, art has always been the central focus of her existence. "I go from show to show, cycle of painting to cycle of painting," she says. "I don't think much of the future, nor of the past." She credits her Romanian upbringing with providing useful perspective: "It wasn't a place of high expectations, and that's good for a painter. You don't work for the exhibition, you don't work for the success, you certainly don't work for the financial rewards. You work for the painting, and the only expectations you have are for the work."
The "Messiaen" exhibition runs from November 15 to December 20 at Fox Jensen Gallery in Alexandria, offering Sydney audiences a rare opportunity to experience the work of one of Australia's most accomplished yet underrecognized artistic voices.
