Dinu Corina - The Dreamer

There is a particular quality to a face that is almost asleep.
The eyes are not fully closed. The lips are not speaking. The expression is somewhere between the last conscious thought and the first image that comes when thinking stops. That is the moment I painted.
I built The Dreamer almost entirely with a palette knife on heavyweight 390 g/m² cotton canvas. The knife lets me work fast and with full commitment — there is no hesitation in palette knife painting, no going back, no blending into something safe. Each plane of colour is a decision that stays visible permanently.
The palette is dominated by turquoise and deep blue — colours that belong to water, to night, to the interior world. They move through the composition in wide, confident planes, broken by green, purple, ochre, a flash of orange behind the closed eye on the right. And then the lips: cadmium red, built up in impasto layers until the surface becomes almost sculptural, the one place in the painting where the inside breaks through.
Two faces share one head. Two states of mind inhabit the same moment. The black contour lines hold the geometry together — architecture for something that has no architecture of its own.
This is a painting about the space between waking and dreaming. Most people recognise it immediately.
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 Dreamer
Year: 2026
Technique: Acrylic on canvas, palette knife, impasto
Canvas weight: 390 g/m² cotton
Image size: 90 × 125 cm
Canvas size: 100 × 135 cm
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.