Montse Valdes & Maria Paola Coda in The Art of intimacy.

Both female painters reflect the human psyche, the raw beauty that hides in the state of one’s mind and tell a personal story in their own terms that deeply create intimate portraits that manages to capture ‘the peace of the soul’

For figurative-Barcelona-based Montse Valdés, art is all about intuition. It’s not about following a fad and attempting to create something that’s in fashion for all of five minutes – it’s about creating what comes from within: listening to an inner ear and following intuition. Technique can be learnt, but mastery comes from patience, from practice and from instinct.

From the outset, Maria Paola Coda’s artworks appear as abstract hatchings. They are layer upon layer of colour and brushstrokes to an egg-shell effect. But what seem to be soft and delicate etchings are in actual fact much more than that. They seeped in emotion, in mental states, moods, thoughts and experiences. With each stroke, each colour, each line, there is a new message of the human condition imbued in Coda’s work.