Dionisia Salas with spent mouths

Drawing is the basis of my current work, a preface to painting, allowing me to submit to the subconscious and the absurd. My drawings are loose and automatic – wandering lines dip in and out of figuration and abstraction. For this work, I have allowed deliberate thought processes to tacitly intertwine, creating an intimacy that is bizarre yet serious. Translating this idea into paint, forms bulge out of shape and colours mash together to form brown, grey and deep visceral tones. Outlines begin to blur and develop fleshy, built-up muscle that alludes to the physical world. Consciousness and intellect wrestle with the unconscious and gestural; the dichotomy of mind and body in a sticky mass.

Dionisia Salas, 2023