Invisible Walls IV. Self-portrait

The project “Invisible Walls” is made up of a series of four plastic works with which I express different emotions and feelings that exist inside me, but which for different reasons have come up against invisible walls.

These walls symbolise fears and insecurities, which rise up and confront me, preventing me from bringing to light in a pure form what I want to express or what I feel, mutating into another different feeling, that of a choked cry, a tearless cry, a cut smile or muffled anger.

These four works represent an inner war between feelings and fears, all generated by myself in a conscious or unconscious way and that prevent me from evolving, achieving new purposes or simply expressing myself as I am.

I could say that each image shows the right moment between the newly ignited emotion that is born and dies in the same moment that it hits its invisible wall, generating in that instant a new emotion, now contained and halfway between abandonment and struggle. That precise moment can be the beginning of a victorious feeling that goes outwards, or that of an emotion that begins a frustrated journey back inwards.

Each emotion represented in the four works is different, impossible to express in words, needing to be represented by the material-tangible: water-based markers, brushes, Chinese ink, ink pens, reeds, water, bleach and paper; and by the material-intangible, experiences, thoughts, and repressed feelings that live deep in my psyche, but which by the mere fact of being there are also matter.

Technique: Mixed media.
Support: Canson paper. 250 grams.
Size: 16.5 × 11.7 in. / 29,7 × 42 cm.
Date of creation: March 2022.
Original artwork by the author: David Lopera Gómez.