CAPTURING THE MOMENT: PAINTINGS BY MARTA CARCELLER
Painting is a deeply personal endeavour artist Mara Carceller. With an academic background in music and psychology, Carceller decided to fully commit to her lifelong passion for art after tragic loss and the Covid pandemic. She explains, “After the tragic death of my husband and father of my 4 children, began to dedicate myself even more to this exciting world of art and realised that what my husband encouraged me to do was what really fulfilled me and what I really needed: to stop the world in order to learn from myself and from my own mistakes and to take the time to explore my own interior.” The result is a remarkable portfolio of paintings inspired by the artist’s everyday life.
Always free Acrylic on canvas / 130 x 100 cm
Recuerdos de mi abuelo Ximo en Forcall Acrylic on canvas / 100 x 100 cm
Carceller has created a unique visual vocabulary, combining abstraction and figuration in warm light-filled paintings characterised by a dynamic textured surface. When describing her technique, the artist explains, “Although the intense work of drawing and highlighting the colours and shadows allows me to achieve two-dimensionality, a fine rain of abstraction runs through my paintings, soaking behind it the everyday figuration in an elegant pictorial symbiosis.” Carceller skilfully combines hyperrealism and painterly expressionism in artworks that represent poignant moments in time. In Immersed in fantastic worlds a child is reading on a step outside; the warmth of the sun is palpable. In the same direction depicts two children animatedly running down a treelined street and into the future. Carceller captures the nostalgia, tenderness and beauty of everyday moments.
Immersed in fantastic worlds Acrylic on wood / 100 x 100 cm
Playing in the beach Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm
The artist takes a dynamic and open-ended approach to her work, not knowing how her ideas will materialise, but enjoying the spontaneity of the process, “I know how I start a work, but not how I am going to finish it. In my case, the act of creating has a clear starting point, but as I advance and delve deeper into it, it becomes a truly exciting and extremely enriching adventure, pouring part of myself into the fabric or wood.
I have found in the artistic discipline and the creative process a constant source of personal and creative growth.” An important part of this process is imbuing the work with emotion to evoke the artist’s emotion for her subject matter, and in turn, encourage an emotional response in the viewer. She hopes that “what they observe stirs some internal aspect, and with this, perhaps it can lead them to relive memories or past experiences.”
Carceller hopes that her works create a moment of reflection for the viewer, “to stop time and to observe and feel, breaking with the inertia of everyday life which pushes us to do things with voracious demand, competitiveness, and speed.”
In the same direction Acrylic on canvas / 150 x 100 cm