Lorena Torres’s paintings work as narratives and describe both a temporality and environment specific to the Colombian Caribbean, as well as a state of rest and leisure. A theme that is referenced in these scenes is the custom of gossip, whispered conversations, which through red hands and ears appear symbolically in the representation of the characters that frolic in the paintings.

Lorena Torres

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Painting, the rurality of the Colombian Caribbean, and I are a tripartite marriage. Better said, a free union, an inseparable complicity. A wordless dialogue with the primitivism of the region where I grew up. With my paintings, I tell the tale of the face of an ugly politician poorly painted on a mural. I describe the plastic flower that resists a coastal cemetery's heated and dusty floor; I evoke the blue sky of the day submitting to the black night; I remember a goodbye kiss. With my paintings, I recognize the cultural heritage of the Caribbean while I rediscover how the Caribbean sees the world: surreal, fiery, gritty. My paintings have the versatility of my fantasies. They tell distant stories, distant from the whims of the city. In them, I recreate the countryside, the fruits, the smell of the mountain, the sound of the rain and the wind that shakes the tamarind branch. With them, I bring the fiction of my land to the eyes of the wider public and the colors of its uniqueness. My painting and, in general, my artistic exploration are one; they are life after death, like my grandfather Manuel del Cristo, who was born once and died twice, although no one believes me. These are not stories to tell, and they are stories to watch.