"Ricordando Plinio" Painting

BIOGRAPHY

Daniela Colonna is a painter whose research explores identity in its most intimate and changeable dimension: who we are, what we show, and what remains hidden.

Her figurative painting, rooted in symbolism and a visionary imagination, arises from the encounter between reality and the dream world. Through the face, the body and the female figure, Colonna explores memory, transformation, vulnerability and self-perception. Natural and symbolic elements such as flowers, leaves, roots, flames, water and the moon become presences through which the inner world takes shape.

In her most recent works, the figure gradually fragments: the face dissolves into vertical brushstrokes, fragments of color and structures that evoke digital perception. Painting becomes an unstable surface, suspended between presence and dissolution, between the image we show to others and the one we recognize within ourselves. Her interest goes beyond the simple representation of a face: she aims to transform it into a psychological space in which memory, emotion and identity can emerge, fragment and recompose themselves.

This research has given rise to her current project, "Identitas – Between Reflection and Recognition", dedicated to the many forms of identity and the different versions of the self. Her aim is to capture the suspended instant in which we recognize ourselves, or discover that we no longer do. She draws inspiration from her own dreams, transforming the inner world into images where dreams, emotions and symbolic visions take shape. Her painting preserves a poetic and visionary dimension in which beauty and unease coexist, while developing an increasingly contemporary and introspective language.

Born in Naples in 1981, she lives and works in Caserta. Since 2006 she has exhibited in Rome, Naples, Ischia and throughout Campania, including Palazzo Colonna in Rome and the PAN – Palazzo delle Arti in Naples. She has won prizes in national painting competitions, including the Margherita d'Argento in Cesena and the Premio Città di Foggia (2006).

In 2011 she collaborated with Maestro Lello Ruggiero on the altarpiece for the Sanctuary of Sant'Anna in Caserta. Her works have been published in books, magazines and art catalogues. Her works are held in private collections, and she has sold more than fifty paintings.