Abstract Reverie

Marina Stellanova · 1962

Medium

Oil and gold leaf on canvas

Dimensions

180 × 150 cm

Stellanova's largest surviving canvas is a meditation on memory and time rendered in deep blues, teals, and luminous gold leaf. The artist described this work as an attempt to paint the feeling of a half-remembered dream — the way certain images persist in the mind with an intensity that exceeds lived experience. She worked on the canvas over eighteen months, building up layers of oil glazes before applying gold leaf by hand with a fine brush. The result is a surface that shifts between opacity and luminescence as the viewer moves.