Adriana
Pérez Orozco

My practice is rooted in contemporary figurative painting with maximalist and surreal influences. The figures are often young and mixed-race, with calm expressions, while everything around them carries more than the face alone can reveal. The environment becomes an extension of the person until the whole painting begins to act as a portrait of a state of mind.

Beauty and color draw the viewer into the details and composition. As the work unfolds, contrast and contradiction begin to reveal what sits beneath the surface.

Color has been part of how I organize and remember the world since childhood. I experience grapheme-color synesthesia: numbers evoke specific colors in my mind. That instinctive relationship with color shapes the way I build my compositions and sits naturally beside my Caribbean background, where intensity and bold combinations feel natural.

The process begins by designing relationships between the figure and everything that will surround it. Once painting starts, the work remains open to change. Elements move or disappear, and entire areas may begin again. Time becomes secondary because what matters is reaching the point where too much finds its own order and the whole composition holds together.

I deepen the work by introducing details from objects or nature and anything else that can add another layer. Some appear as painted elements, while others return physically inside the Collector’s Box and create a connection between the artwork and something that can be held and preserved. Real materials are also beginning to enter the paintings themselves.

My experience with cancer made the body a more conscious part of my practice. Physical transformation shifted the way I think about form and identity, and opened a growing interest in intervention, objects, and materials that can extend the painting beyond its surface.

Painting gives me a way to construct an image that can stand on its own. From there, I am happy for others to bring their own reading to it.