Vodniciar Vladimir Artwork Landscape «Fountain in Moldova» — 58x90cm oil on canvas 2008

This painting is a typical landscape from Moldova. The Fountain at the edge of the village of Ciopleni was painted in 2008 after a photograph taken on October 30, 2007, at 5:56 p.m. This scene was observed and discovered by me while I was living in Moldova. I walked from the direction of Făurești to this old fountain at the edge of the village of Ciopleni (Hrușova), Moldova, while taking several photographs during a documentary journey through the villages of Moldova, in preparation for creating several landscape paintings about the unique and remarkable places of Moldova. At the entrance to the village of Ciopleni, coming from the direction of Ciorescu and Făurești, in a place at the edge of the village, this old traditional peasant fountain has been preserved—a silent witness to a world that has passed through time without losing its memory. In my painting, I show this traditional rural fountain, which is built on a massive base of natural stone. The exterior finish features shades of light blue and grey, with visible traces of wear and the patina of time. The water-drawing mechanism is made of metal (a wheel with an axle), painted blue, and is used for winding the chain or rope by manual rotation. A galvanized metal bucket is placed directly on the edge of the fountain. On the left side, there is a large trough, carved from a single piece of porous white stone, historically used for watering animals. The atmosphere and the late autumn light envelop the place in an atmosphere of contemplation and add a meditative dimension to the painting—between past and present, between the road and memory. From a chromatic point of view, the work is built on a subtle relationship between the cool tones of blue and grey and the warm, earthy and golden shades of the autumn landscape. The structure of the fountain is one of the visual focal points of the composition through its muted blue tones, which contrast subtly with the browns, dark greens and yellows of the surrounding vegetation. In this painting, I did not paint a harsh contrast, but rather one softened by the evening light and by the overall patina of the image. The sky has a particular importance in the construction of the atmosphere. It does not appear as a simple background, but as a broad, luminous and changing surface, built from transitions of bluish-green, light greys and yellowish-cream reflections. This combination creates the sensation of a late light, at a moment of transition, when the day has not yet completely ended, but the colours are already beginning to calm and lose the intensity of direct light. I painted the surfaces through accumulations of brushstrokes and areas of relief, allowing the painting to retain the presence of the hand and the painter's gesture. The vegetation, the fences, the stone and the sky each have their own texture—this differentiation of the painted matter allows the viewer to perceive not only the represented objects, but also the physical sensation of the place: the roughness of the old wood, the porosity of the stone, the damp and irregular vegetation at the edge of the road, and the worn surface of the structure. The horizontal format of the composition is constructed through the distribution of the main elements. The massive trough on the left and the fountain on the right form two important volumes, between which a space for breathing and a visual dialogue are created. The trough, positioned low and close to the viewer, introduces the composition in the foreground and guides the eye towards the fountain, while the horizontal water-drawing mechanism continues this direction and creates a connection between the objects within the scene. The simple wooden fence forms a repetitive vertical rhythm, almost like a succession of lines drawn across the horizon of the landscape. These elements define the rural space without completely enclosing it and, at the same time, create a structure that contrasts with the more massive and calmer forms of the fountain and the trough — it is precisely this lack of deliberate spectacle that makes the scene so authentic. The uniqueness of the painting also comes from the fact that the place was not chosen for its monumental or tourist character. It is a corner of a rural road, found during a journey and observed at a precise moment in the evening. The fountain is in its natural environment, surrounded by fences, vegetation, earth and the traces of everyday life—this choice transforms an apparently modest subject into an image with documentary, emotional and artistic value. This fountain is, in fact, a symbol of the Moldovan village: a place of rest, meeting and connection between generations. Through its restrained colour palette and modest architecture, the work preserves the image of an authentic, rural Moldova, captured before many of these signs of traditional life disappear. In this work of art, memory is not expressed through a human scene, because no people appear; however, their presence can be felt everywhere: in the wood of the fences, in the carved stone, in the mechanism of the fountain and in the bucket left on the edge of the structure. The objects thus become carriers of an indirect human presence. They speak about those who built this place, about those who passed through here, and about the simple and repeated gestures that were part of village life. The light at the end of the day contributes decisively to this meditative dimension. The painted tones are muted and harmonized within a common atmosphere, as if the entire place were covered by a light that unites the sky, the earth, the wood, the stone and the metal into a single state. For this reason, the painting is not only a representation of a fountain, but also the preservation of a particular moment, a particular hour and a particular atmosphere that the photograph recorded, and which I later transformed through painting into a personal artistic interpretation. Very often, for an Artist-Painter, the most important places are those familiar corners encountered during repeated walks: — a fountain, a fence, an old house, the evening light. In this Artwork, precisely such an ordinary place that becomes important through my eyes. I have shown the Fountain at the edge of the village of Ciopleni as a living part of a rural landscape that preserves the traces of time. Through the balance between the cool blues, the earthy tones, the muted green of the vegetation and the warm light of a late autumn evening, my painting constructs an image of rural Moldova seen as a personal memory. The Artwork thus preserves the dual character of a testimony about a real place and of a personal pictorial interpretation. This scene with this old Fountain, discovered by me, is a reflection on time, on the gradual disappearance of the traditional rural world, and on those simple places in the villages of Moldova which, for someone who has known them and observed them carefully, can remain forever in the heart and memory. We brought this canvas with us on the airplane in 2012, together with other paintings from our family archive.