By Laura Isabella
“Working with collage there is such a marvellous diversity of textures,” artist Maria Berrio enthuses. “Different sounds made as they are torn… I love the spreading of glue with sticky fingers, the stretching, the cutting. These collages are built layer by layer forming the topographical features upon the canvas.”
It was this tactile, hands-on creative process that first drew Maria to collage as her medium of choice over a decade ago. Painstakingly slow to create and imbued with the innate power of women, Maria’s work takes on an almost visceral effect. It is hard, as the viewer, to not have a deep response to the women and scenes her layer upon layer of torn paper create. “My work isn’t autobiographical,” Maria, who hails from Colombia explains. “But I do paint idealised parts of myself in the women I create. These are women I want to be: in harmony with themselves and nature, strong, vulnerable, compassionate and courageous.”
Maria’s Colombian heritage plays a large role in her work, which is laced with themes of South American mythology and folklore. For her, exploring this side of her heritage has “served to unravel the mysteries of our world whilst simultaneously deepening it further.” Maria likens this to the larger impact of art on the viewer, “When exposed to great art, it often seems to me as if some deep truth is being revealed, yet I can’t always grasp what it is with my mind, only feel it.”
