"The Awakening" Painting

IVÂNIA (b.1986, Ivânia dos Santos) is a self taught contemporary artist born in Portugal. Although painting and drawing were always present throughout her childhood, it was only after the age of 30 that she fully embraced art as the center of her creative life. Having taken her first artistic steps in Luxembourg, IVÂNIA developed a visual language oscillating between symbolic figuration and emotional abstraction. Working primarily with acrylic and oil stick, she creates textured compositions where stylized faces, still lifes and hidden silhouettes emerge through layered forms and instinctive gestures. Her work explores themes of identity, femininity, memory and human relationships, often incorporating references to fashion, consumer culture, tables, food and symbolic everyday objects. Balancing mystery, emotional depth and poetic tension, her paintings invite viewers into intimate visual narratives shaped by intuition, imperfection and atmosphere. Now based in Portugal, Ivânia continues to develop a distinctive body of work rooted in emotion, symbolism and contemporary visual culture.