Eve
Print 40 × 40 cm
Painter · Toulouse
Painting
the light
Three series, one subject. The light that glides across the façades, the light that turns over in the water of the canals, the light that settles on a nape, a shoulder, a gesture.
Theme
Figures
The tender gesture. A nape, two open hands, an embrace. The figures emerge from a ground of light and matter, on the threshold of apparition. Finalist of the Figurativas 2025 competition at the MEAM in Barcelona, mention at the Salon des Artistes Français 2024.
12 works · acrylic on canvas
What the hands hold back, what the skin lets through : light, again, become almost a character.
Geste tendre series
Theme
Landscapes
Water as a mirror. Canals, bridges, tawny lakes: the landscape is read upside down, in its reflection. Trees become clouds, the horizon a line of vapour. The formats stretch out, panoramic, to let the road run on.
12 works · acrylic on canvas
The reflection is not a copy. It is the landscape hesitating, trembling, consenting to come undone in colour.
Water reflections
Theme
Architectures
Walls that breathe. Rome, Fira, Toulouse : the city is never a backdrop. Façades dissolve in the brightness, staircases break apart, passageways open. What remains is matter and a light that passes through everything.
12 works · acrylic on canvas
Abri de lumière, Silence habité, Passage de clarté: the titles say the same thing as the canvas. You do not enter it, you dwell in it.
About
- Born in Havana, Cuba 1965
- Trained in New York City.
- Lives in France and has an art studio in the Lauragais.
- Organizes training courses, teaches drawing and painting.
- Member of a jury for various art exhibitions.
- Member of the Salon des Artistes Français Paris,
- Member of the Taylor foundation,
- Member of the Salon d'Automne de Paris.
- Exhibits in galleries in France, Europe and abroad.
I-CAC rated artistInstitut de Cotation de l'Art Contemporain — see the ratingPainting is where memory, time, and light converge. My practice has evolved through a personal visual language based on the dialogue between acrylic glazes and clear water. By layering multiple translucent veils of color and then selectively revealing them with water, I allow the image to emerge gradually rather than appear all at once—like a memory slowly resurfacing.
My work explores the enduring traces left by people, landscapes, and lived experience. Water is its central metaphor: it separates, transforms, erases, and renews. It also carries a deeply personal resonance, rooted in my exile from Cuba in 1969, a memory that quietly permeates my work. Rather than telling an autobiographical story, I seek to give a visual form to what remains when places, faces, and time itself have been altered.
What drives my practice is the desire to restore time to its rightful place. In contrast to the culture of immediacy that defines our contemporary world, I embrace a slow process in which each layer of paint must be applied, allowed to dry, observed, and only then followed by the next. This extended temporality is not simply a working method; it is an artistic position. It echoes the approach of the Old Masters, for whom painting was a patient construction in which light emerged from successive layers rather than from immediate effect. I feel deeply connected to this tradition. Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, the Flemish Masters, Velázquez, Monet, and Magritte are not references I seek to emulate, but enduring presences that accompany my own inquiry: how can painting make visible what lies beyond appearances while remaining rooted in the figurative world?
My paintings invite contemplation. Light seems to rise from within the depth of the canvas, filtering through translucent glazes until a presence gradually reveals itself. Within this suspended space, the viewer is invited to slow down, to dwell in the act of looking, and to experience what continues to resonate beyond the image itself: memory, absence, and the fragile beauty of what endures.
Write, visit, collect
garces-de-marcilla.diane@orange.fr
06 52 76 40 76
Studio in Toulouse, visits by appointment. Artist rated by I-CAC. Follow the studio:
Diane Garcès de Marcilla — SIRET 485 161 749 00026 — RCS Toulouse. All works reproduced are the property of the artist.
