Clara D’Elia is a Brazilian painter based in Florence. Trained in both biology and classical painting, she works at the intersection of natural form and personal and historical memory, believing that structure carries meaning and emotion. She works in oil painting and drawing. The natural world, especially the botanical one, is a deep and constant source that grounds and enlightens her practice.
What draws her to a subject is always a knot, emotional, psychological, philosophical, something that resists language but can be glimpsed through form. She is drawn to the moment when an image stops being a depiction and becomes a symbol, a portal onto something larger and primordial.
She believes that nature, like art, exists before words arrive and that they speak the same language.