This is an original 45x45cm painting , made on cold pressed 300g paper, in acrylics, gouache, watercolor and pencils. The painting comes signed on the back and it doesn’t have a frame. It is part of a collection of paintings, all under the theme “The center will hold” which i have started during 2020 pandemics. Here is the story.

For the past weeks I’ve tried to paint and I really couldn’t. There was a constant struggle, my emotions were all over the place and I have found my painting irrelevant in all this present context. Then I discovered a poem by William Butler Yeats, called “The Second Coming” and it had one line which struck home: “Things fall apart/ the center will not hold”. It was a poem written after WW1 and it’s about the poet’s disbelief in the modern age that was coming and all the chaos that surrounded the post war world.

With all my stubborn nature I decided that the Center will hold and I will follow its steps to take me to the shore. So I’m starting a new series of illustrations, guided by this compass and named “The center will hold”. With each painting I’ll try to bring together this narrative and also lyrical side of mine, who always puts everything in emotional stories and the visual, dreamy side, who puts things in shapes, colors and textures. Every illustration will be a bridge that I’ll cross, a form of connecting, of discovering myself and how i m dealing with everything, how i m changing, how i can or cannot take everything in and transform it into something new, or simply acknowledge its presence. I lack predictability, cohesiveness and direction right now, so I’m making my own and I ll try to build a bridge with each and every one of you