Cristina de Miguel

Vivaciously expressive paintings by Cristina de Miguel are full of playful drama. Elastic female bodies bend and stretch, alongside a host of hybrid creatures. Mermaids, animals, mythic beasts. Figures meld into the background – making the environment as important as individuality. The artist works in lots of ways. But in general, she creates a thin background wash which dries overnight. Then she applies many layers painted with brushes in acrylic and drawn by hand in oil stick. This is Miguel's M.O – materiality. The infinite qualities of paint prevail over the narratives they tell. That said, allegorical stories do emerge albeit subconsciously. And the artist intentionally leaves these open for the viewer to decipher. While her works have a papably neo-expressionist style, her influences are incredibly varied. From Peloponnesian war artifacts from ancient Greece to Baroque painting and social media.

Not only do the paintings portray bodies, but they are bodily in nature. Accidental paint splatters, drips and fingerprints are extensions of the artist herself. "I am very interested in looking at a painting and feeling the body making those marks. The timing: parts that are slow and parts that happen very fast. Experiencing marks as time recorders." This is clear in the fact that de Miguel often paints with her large-scale canvases on the floor. So the gestures are created with many different muscles. Biceps, quads, core. As such, each brushstroke or meandering line is a document. A record of the body doing something in time.