Mariló Carral comes from a 500-year-old lineage in Mexico City.  Self-taught, her works are very much steeped in her native tradition.  Culture and memories permeate her canvases.

Mariló Carral’s paintings derive from her earliest childhood memories.  She reminisces about painting with her father, Jazier Carral, who is both a painter and famous architect. Encouraged to paint beside him, Carral loved the collaboration of artists who gathered at her father’s studio on weekends. Her mother, Elizabeth Carral, was a teacher at the French school in their hacienda.  Carral often drew inspiration from the pageantry and cultural costumes worn by the children during school festivals.  Days were spent engrossed in French lessons and in the gardens behind her house.  Carral still walks amongst the flowers of her ancestral home in Mexico City, as her paintings encapsulate the lushness and vibrancy of her childhood.

Color is essential to Carral.  With it, she creates a luminous quality that is composed of energy and light.  Her palette is reminiscent of such Fauve artists as Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck.  Complimentary to color, she uses pattern.  Inspired by the Austrian Art Nouveau painter, Gustave Klimt, Carral synthesizes the elements of pattern and the circular motif to tie together her compositions.  Her shapes and forms are drawn from her collection of hand-made textiles, Mexican pottery and toy miniatures.

With each work, Carral begins with a stark white background and applies ink in motions of the dance.  She uses a long paintbrush and works in slow movements.  Her beginnings are about fluidity and gesture of the body.  She then mixes acrylic medium with pigment powder and paints on a light transparency.  She chooses pure pigments to bring about a prismatic effect and then applies complementary colors.  These colors placed next to each other vibrations to the eyes and seem to almost leap off the canvas. Rather than creating three-dimensionality, she builds asymmetrical compositions that evoke emotion and mood. She accomplishes this through flat forms, decorative shapes and bright colors. In resolving each work, Carral weaves a bold patchwork of color, a form that creates her signature style.

Her landscapes are drawn from childhood memories when she would spend the Summer’s in the countryside. She would envision birds, trees and flowers when gazing upon the clouds.  In her painting, “Fiery Sky” mountains fill the canvas in shades of crimson. New planting fields rise up in the foreground ready for harvesting. The landscape becomes a motif for nature while in her still life,“El Gato Morado,” Carral invites the viewer into an intimate domestic setting. A triumphant bouquet of daffodils, roses, and poesies is set upon the table.  A midnight cat perched on a chair guards this vibrant scene.  Although the painting is immersed in saturated colors, one has a sense of quietness and subtlety.  We are left to wonder who was there as no human form is present.

Mariló Carral combines her love of nature and memories with elements of colors and pattern to create lush and living canvases.  Each painting breathes human expression.  In all, Carral paints from both spirit and bodily form and allows the viewer to partake in her invitation to a celebration.

© Virginia Repasky