If it’s true what they say, that our bodies are 67 percent made out of water, what mysteries could we discover in the depths of those inner oceans? This question came to me when first experiencing Marcela Bolivar’s enchanting photo painting Written in Waters. Some photographers paint with light, but Marcela takes things a step further and creates a unique blend of the painterly and the picturesque. Her visual poems summon an ethereal atmosphere that invite the viewer into a mystery that we may or may not uncover. The central figure of this piece feels like a man trying to connect with some imagined or real moment of the past. The fleshy frame that surrounds the murky depths of this ‘body of water’ seem to bind it to a moment long gone.
The shadowy, reflected figure could be a lost lover or a forgotten friend, someone who was once important but now feels in danger of vanishing into the seas of time. Interesting is how the whole piece has the sense of being slightly submerged, with its out of focus edges and the blends of blue and white that paint the sky. Something I always love about digital art is how artists like Marcela find ways to re-invent different media to suit their stories and how the boundaries between artistic formats thus begin to ripple and blur. Coming from South America but currently living in Germany, Marcela is a creative whose visual sensibility manages to always make it feel like she’s shaping dreams. Not happy slumbers per se and maybe after a while, we do want to wake up, but like any powerful experience, the imagery still stays with us for a long time after it’s ended.
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