‘Summer Day’ began, for the esteemed Moldovan painter Cezara Kolesnik, with a memory – of childhood , flowers and the solstice, when the days are at their longest and will never be that long again.
As a painter devoted to modernism, Kolesnik draws on the most diverse creative sources. Hers is a universe full of symbols depicted in colours pure and bright, mixed with the melancholy eyes of children lost, children asleep on hills or in the embrace of sympathetic dragons.
‘Summer Day’ grew out of her recollection of sânziene, a word that denotes the gentle fairies who play an important role in Moldovan folklore, the annual festival in the fairies’ honour, and the yellow flowers known in English as lady's bedstraw.
During the festival, maidens collect flowers, including lady’s bedstraw.
‘This work was inspired by my memory of the midsummer celebration in my childhood, when I was running on the hills with my friend, gathering golden flowers – sanziene – and bringing them home late in the evening,” Kolesnik says.
‘I have a vivid memory of this warm summer evening, hills and those golden flowers, which like little stars were dripping their petals for several days until they were gone".