Adriana
Merlo

My work begins with a return to creating with my hands after years in which my artistic practice was placed on hold by life, family, work and the responsibilities that often shape adulthood. Reaching my forties brought a moment of reflection: a need to ask what remains essential, what has been postponed, and what parts of oneself still need to be lived. For me, art returned not as nostalgia, but as a vital necessity.

I have always been drawn to creating through the body and the hand. I am both impulsive and contemplative; I need moments of production, but also pauses, silence and time inside my own visual thinking. This rhythm has never fitted easily into rigid structures. My work grows from that same rhythm: from action and pause, intuition and refinement, freedom and care.

My practice moves between painting, sculpture and wearable forms. Rather than understanding them as separate disciplines, I see them as different ways of exploring the same concerns: materiality, organic form, movement, tactility and the tension between control and accident. Sometimes these ideas remain on the surface; at other times they acquire volume, weight, structure or a relationship with the body.

With a background in sculpture, I rarely understand an image as something that belongs only to a flat surface. Even within my works on paper, there is often a desire for the image to acquire physical presence. Watercolor brings lightness, fluidity and unpredictability; textile introduces volume, texture and body. The textile element is not decorative in a secondary sense. It is often the point at which the painting begins to become an object.

My process moves between control and accident, intention and discovery. I begin with a clear attraction to certain materials, forms and colors, but I do not want to know completely where the work will end. The movement of water, the expansion of pigment, the resistance of a material, the construction of a form and later interventions allow each piece to develop its own inner logic. Sometimes a discarded work returns later and becomes something unexpected through further manipulation.

Materials are central to my practice. I am drawn to those that feel close to the natural and the tactile: wood, iron, stones collected from Spain's northern beaches, watercolor, paper, wool and textile. I am interested in materials that retain a physical honesty, that do not feel overly synthetic or detached from the hand. Their presence allows the work to hold apparent opposites at once: lightness and weight, softness and resistance, delicacy and physical presence.

Color has also become part of a personal evolution. My earlier visual language was more sober and restrained. Over time, I began to introduce more light and vitality into my life, and that shift is now reflected in my work. The pieces I create are more luminous, more open and more alive, yet they still seek calm, elegance and balance.

I am interested in quiet vitality: color, movement and inner detail held within forms that remain calm, tactile and considered. In a visual culture often dominated by neutral, white and impersonal interiors, I want my works to bring character, presence and soul into a space. They are not intended as purely decorative objects, although they can live beautifully within interiors. Whether they exist on a wall, occupy space or relate directly to the body, I think of them as tactile, organic presences: small concentrations of energy, softness and material life.

At the center of my practice is the search for a tactile, organic beauty that emerges from the balance between control and accident, intuition and construction, surface and volume. A beauty that feels alive without being loud; joyful without being superficial; calm without becoming static.