In Sylvia Fernández’s paintings, a sense of merging, coalescing and mingling with the elements feels palpable, almost physical. In a frequent motif of a female form bathing in shallow water in a half-filled tub or a shallow pond, time flows and slows, as if these figures emerged like Selkies from a primordial sea. Across many of the works in New Islands, her past show at Tyger Tyger Gallery, water surrounds human hands, birds, and close-cropped nude figures. Fernández’s figures merge with water, but they do not feel like they are sinking away from us—or from life. They rise into being as if we can relate in some way with their emotional world.
Fernández studied at Corriente Alterna, an art school in Lima, Peru, where she graduated with honors in 2002. Her work has been collected and exhibited internationally. She was a semifinalist in BP Portrait Award in London in 2017, a finalist in Spain’s Focus Abengoa Foundation award in 2005, and a semifinalist for the Pasaporte para un Artista award in Lima in 2004, to name a few. She has participated in United Art Fair Miami, Art Fair Cologne in Germany, and Arco Art Fair in Spain, and Salon Acme in Mexico. She has exhibited recently in Uruguay and Brazil. Fernández is represented by Galería del Paseo in Lima, Peru and her work is collected throughout the world.