“The graphite portraits I create are almost realistic, suspended in a personal universe between realism and vision, but I'm not interested in virtuous details, I look for the representation of the emotions of my subjects. Drawing has always been present in my life, like a way of expressing myself. My portraits embody a feeling of isolation and introspection, involved in silence.

Memory, fears and loneliness in this society are the subjects that obsess me. I try to bring to the surface all traces of emotions behind a gaze. To create my portraits I use photography as a starting point and then I clean the image with an extreme minimalism, in the composition, medium and colours, probably due to my architectural formation. I work in grayscale, with touches of red. I'm inspired by the iconography and traditional Asian drawings (especially Chinese and Japanese), trying to avoid the excess of decoration.

My subjects are mainly female, proud and visibly melancholic. I have experienced personally the contrast of cultures between East and West, and this has helped and inspired my artistic creation, in which both atmospheres are reflected.”

Lantomo, pseudonym of Antonella Montes, is an Italian artist based in Barcelona, working between Spain, Italy and China. Her drawings are a diary of characters caught in the flat surface on which they are created, trying to get free, like metamorphic beings; faces that hide their engraved emotions and memories.

Experimenting with wood, a warm and unique material, using tools and aesthetics belonging to the contemporary illustration, Lantomo creates an imaginary world of characters frozen at the instant in which they express themselves. Pencil, charcoal, acrylics and inks are her basic painting elements, usually working with mixed technique and a preference for black, white and red.