I’m surrounded by oversized heads in different colours – one in red, another blue, one more in purple. We’re in the studio of painter Constantin Cosmin and it’s easy to take a glance and say his paintings all look the same, but each work is subtly different and based on different persons – though the faces have been stripped back to their most simple elements of an outline, eyes, nose and mouth.
Each face has no ascribable race, gender, religion, or objects in the background to hint at their character, wealth or social status. It’s set out like that so that we all look into each face and see ourselves or different elements of ourselves within each work. Constantin is interested in the similarities that unite us, a message that feels relevant given that it seems like we’re living through an age of division.
Constantin lost both his parents while he was a young man and regained his energy through creating art, something he recalls doing with his mother when he was a child. It’s this early brush with mortality that comes through in his work as he’s creating art that has the potential to outlive him so it will persist after he dies – thereby achieving immortality through art. It’s also why he has developed this signature style of work so that anyone, including those outside of art, can recognise his works as one of his own – using art to leave his mark on this world.
He grew up in an Orthodox Christian household surrounded by religious icons on the walls, so this idea of immortal figures on the walls has come through in the figurative portraits he creates. While his paintings aren’t overtly religious they carry the same concept of preserving a person and an image so that it can persist long after its creator has passed.
His works are largely smooth controlled lines, that is until you get to the mouth, which is filled with frenzied brush strokes that are in stark contrast to the other facial features. The works are speaking but we can’t hear a word – it’s for us the viewer to build the narrative around each work and to decide how each work speaks to us. When it comes to the artist’s own interpretation of what they are saying it’s clear it doesn’t really matter as he would rather let his art do the talking.
More information about Constantin Cosmin may be found on his website and Instagram.
