From Romania, with love

The road that brought Mihail Tomescu (pronounced to-mes-co) to Cape Girar-deau was a long one.

Ten years ago, the 36-year-old Tomescu was on the verge of getting his bachelor of fine arts degree in his native Romania. After that his travels would bring him to the United States, where he earned his master's degree at Pennsylvania State University and taught painting and drawing. Fast forward another few years, and Tomescu now finds himself in Kennett, Mo., painting in a home studio he calls "beautiful."

Cape Girardeau's presence as the art hub of Southeast Missouri has brought him here for an exhibition tonight at Gallery 1.2.5 on Main Street, owned by Mike Rust. Tomescu, who has years of experience as a teacher and contemporary painter, hopes this exhibition -- his first in Cape Girardeau -- will help him connect with the local arts community.

The opportunity to show his work to a local audience arose right after he finished a new series of paintings in his home studio, Tomescu said.

"Right after I finished the paintings, I thought it would be great to get in touch with a gallery," Tomescu said. "That same day Mike called me."

Tomescu arrived in Southeast Missouri after his wife, a doctor, landed a job in Kennett. Before that the couple had been living miles away as he studied at Penn State and she worked as a resident at a Danbury, Conn., hospital. Tomescu said the couple, who have a daughter, spent three years away from each other before they were able to reunite.

But Tomescu has fewer opportunities to show his contemporary oils and mixed media in Kennett than he did at Penn State, where he had a whole gallery to himself as a graduate student studying under Robert Yarber. Tomescu has lived in Kennett only since last summer, and now he's looking to reach out and meet other artists.

Cape Girardeau is the right spot. With its university, Tomescu hopes the city can be a place where he might continue his passion for making art and teaching.

"I feel like Cape, it's the closest place where I can do my job as a teacher," Tomescu says, taking a break from hanging his exhibition Wednesday afternoon. He admits he's a little nervous about showing in Cape Girardeau, unsure of how the local art crowd will take his contemporary, somewhat surrealist work.

But Rust, in an interview last week, said he thinks Tomescu will receive a great reception.

On Wednesday the black walls of Rust's gallery were being covered with 14 mixed media pieces and 11 large oil paintings made by Tomescu. Most of the works incorporate the human form, some blending that form with geometric imagery Tomescu says is inspired by the diagrams of Middle Age alchemists, who studied the relationship between the elements and the spiritual.

The works come from ideas Tomescu sees in dreams, which he then transposes onto canvas.

Some paintings play out against a surrealist landscape where dull, earthy colors sometimes blend with bright reds or blues. One of the larger pieces is called "Inside the Tower," one of the three-part "Tower of Babel" series. Tomescu said he was inspired to create the series after his first trip to the United States, when he arrived in New York City.

"Seeing so many people from so many different countries, speaking so many different languages, it was like a Tower of Babel experience for me," Tomescu says, looking at the piece.

"Inside the Tower" illustrates Tomescu's feelings of being introduced to New York. The painting shows a male human figure, seeming to burst out of a large tower with a dreamlike, hazy city in the background. He says his paintings are his way of communicating his internal experience, but he hopes viewers will internalize the images, too, bringing their own perception to the viewing experience.

"Now I'm trying to find a way to talk to people, to communicate with people through painting," Tomescu said.

His art is visual, but Tomescu likens his approach to that of a musical composer.

"I think about an artist as a sort of composer -- playing with individual parts and organizing them."

msanders@semissourian.com

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