I enjoy depicting figures, often women and children, and exploring a wide range of themes, from questions of identity to childhood memories and how they shape our adult lives. These are not simple portraits, but figures evolving in poetic spaces where imagination and reality intertwine. My paintings exist between figuration and abstraction. I strive to keep them accessible, inviting the viewer into a world that is both familiar and somewhat unsettling.
In my work, nature frequently appears as a symbolic space, a place of refuge, transformation, or self-discovery. The figures seem to traverse landscapes reminiscent of fairy tales or dreams, where beauty and danger coexist, reflecting our life journeys and emotions. I also seek a balance between serenity and unease, a dialogue between joy and melancholy.
My work is slow and unfolds in stages. I often layer paint, gradually adding depth and texture. It’s a way of revealing something hidden, both in the painting itself, within me, and within us all.
In this new series of paintings, I continue to search for those discreet occurrences, those fleeting moments, at the edge of our attention, where nothing seems to be happening, but where everything is actually taking place. It is there that painting takes shape: in the pauses, in the silence, in that time that is no longer measured, but felt. The subjects thus emerge from everyday life: small observations, fragments of time, suspended moments. Two boys are fishing, but perhaps they are waiting for something other than fish… These paintings oscillate between reality and dream. They seek to exist in that infinitesimal moment that transforms them into an image. Off-screen…
Anna-Lisa Unkuri
Read more
