Dinu Corina - The Kiss

Before anything else, there are the lips.
Red. Built up with a palette knife in layer after layer of cadmium red until the paint surface becomes almost sculptural — you can see every mark, every pressure, every decision. Two mouths that haven't touched yet. Or have just stopped. The painting lives in that fraction of a second.
The Kiss is built almost entirely with a palette knife on heavyweight 390 g/m² cotton canvas — the kind of surface that holds thick impasto without yielding. The knife gives the paint a physical presence that no brush can replicate: edges that catch the light, ridges that cast their own shadows, colour that sits on top of colour in visible, permanent layers. In places, the acrylic catches the light the way gold leaf does — not because gold was used, but because the knife builds the paint into relief that reflects differently at every angle.
Two faces share one composition, fragmented into bold geometric planes by confident black contour lines. One eye green. One eye blue. They do not belong to the same moment — or perhaps they do, seen from opposite sides of the same feeling. The palette is deliberately intense: cobalt blue, cadmium red, electric green, deep purple, bright yellow, ochre. These are colours that do not coexist quietly.
This is a painting that fills a room before you have time to decide how you feel about it. And then you cannot stop looking.
Artist: Corina Dinu, Romanian, b. 1979. Studied Fine Arts and at the Istituto Marangoni. Exhibited internationally, including at the Tate Gallery and Rippingham, London.
Title: The Kiss
Year: 2026
Technique: Acrylic on canvas, palette knife, impasto
Image size: 145 × 90 cm
Canvas size: 155 × 100 cm
Canvas: Heavyweight 390 g/m² cotton
Signed: Hand signed on the front, lower right
Provenance: Directly from the artist.
Documentation: Certificate of Authenticity included.
Condition: Mint — painted in 2026, never exhibited, never framed, acrylic fully cured.
Shipping: Rolled and packed in a rigid protective tube, shipped with full tracking and insurance.