Valeria Arco

Valeria Arco is the newest addition to the Cuadros Sils team of painters. Originally from Toledo, she swapped the pace of the capital for the secluded life of her rural studio years ago, and that chosen retreat shows in everything she paints: hers is one of the most serene and coherent voices in today's matter painting. Her territory is matter at rest – plasters, sands, stuccos and mineral glazes worked with a craftswoman's patience until the canvas becomes something very close to bas-relief.

Her palette barely needs colour. Whites, creams, stone greys, earth tones and the occasional muted green make up a colour range that does not seek attention, but holds the gaze. In her work, the emotion does not come from colour: it comes from texture and light. Her surfaces – cracked, incised, combed with regular grooves – change throughout the day depending on how the light in the room grazes them, and that slow life is an essential part of every piece.

Within that coherence, two registers coexist. One is organic, where the material expresses itself freely: incised gestures like ancient markings, imprints, circles that emerge from the background like archaeological remains. The other is geometric at root and more ordered, with arches and oval shapes overlapping with an almost architectural elegance – a series that, curiously, echoes her own surname.

It is exactly the kind of painting that contemporary interior design is calling for: quiet works with enormous physical presence, able to dress a wabi-sabi, Japandi or Mediterranean space without competing with it. A Valeria Arco does not decorate a wall: it calms it.

She sums it up in an idea that guides all her work: not to paint things, but the time that has passed over them.