Skin Painting

Carolina was born in 1974 in Bogotá, Colombia. She studied Fine Arts at Los Andes University and earned her degree in Architecture at the same university. Her work has featured in several personal and collective exhibitions in Bogotá, Miami and Tokyo. In 2014 she attended the workshop of the artist Alyssa Monks, Creating, Translating and Surpassing the Photo-Reference, at the New York Academy of Art, New York. "My work has always been related to my own life. My paintings stem from the close, intimate observation of human skin-that place where personal history is printed and narrated in each spot, each crease, and each wrinkle. We are what is visible in our skin; that makes us readable and therefore vulnerable. My painting wants to explore that vulnerability, that risk we encounter when under the gaze of others. It also wants to create untold stories, to capture past experiences and future hopes or longings (always implicit in the image) in the sheer physicality of the present moment. That´s why I use animal skin as my canvas. I want to build the character out of the painting and the skin, to merge together as one and to tell one whole story. The skin itself, has its marks and scars, so the character in the drawing does. They are put together to complement each other and build a story."