
Big Granite Soft
2022. Acrylic on Linen. 160 x 130 cm.
Nuria Maria
Spending time painting at the Costa Brava last year led to a new colour palette in Nuria Maria’s work: The faded, eroded colours around the coastline affected her paintings deeply. Falling in love with the sun-stained and salt-faded colours of the area, and becoming deeply fascinated with the idea of how time is shown so beautifully by this given; the sea salt eroding the colours of the area over the years, showing how everything is intertwined in nature. This is ‘Sòl Sec’ – ‘Dry Ground’ is an ode to the Catalan landscape.
Amor- you beat my nature
From your power I will not win
In the rocks you’re hiding flowers
Blooming silently within
Son of Venus, blind my eyes
Show me the sea, the grass , the wind
Break my heart I will not cry
For the flowers’ still within
-Anonymous-
Sailing along the coastline. The deep blue sea and the wind. On a little boat we are passing by the big granite rocks. These mighty high rocks. The lines in the stone. The fossils that must be hidden in there. The history they carry and the fresh sea water splashing against the shore. Bright sunlight shining on the warm sandy surface of the granite, cool on the inside. They stand tall, high and dry.
The red granite became a leading image for making this show. Taking the Catalan nature as a base idea for the paintings, one element was building a significant foundation: under every image there it was: the dry ground.
High rocks. warm sand. Dry rye fields and bright field flowers. Dust on the road. Succulents on stones. Shadows under the pine trees that grow from the dry soil nourishing the plants. White oleanders and their roots growing in the dry rocky ground. Warm stones in the sand, big cliffs along the coastline and the rock bottom of the sea, carrying the clear water.
Where the sea salt erodes colours and shows the passing of the time, the rocks and ground for me stand more for the keepers of the time. The layer under all things. The dry foundation of this rich nature. Sól Sec. The base ground for the colours of the area and the solid carrier for everything that grows from it.
-Nuria Maria
2022. Acrylic on Linen. 170 x 200 cm.
2022. Acrylic on Linen. 170 x 200 cm.
“This place is where you can smell the season, hear the leaves blowing in the wind, here’s a certain type of light.
In the end, the most important thing is for me, to reflect, carry something to the outside world, that you feel within yourself; a perception of what lives inside you. Something that catched your eye and made a whole world on its own in that moment, and you bring it out again. Like a Camera Obscura back and forth.
I can work from colours as a starting point, or a certain rhythm with forms, but the feeling that I have about exactly that moment and sentiment that I want to reflect, is always more important than the purely visible state of the painting. That is perhaps, why it can take either one day or a whole month to get the painting exactly the way I need it to be; I can find it pretty, (and I am very much on the aesthetics), but it has to catch a moment in the core.”
-Nuria Maria