Lola Cuallado’s work focuses on depicting elements that we pass by without giving them a lot of thought. Not the ones that we interact each day with and are familiar to us, but the ones that surround us, disappearing in the background. By presenting those elements in a new focus and abstraction, she inspires an intrigue in the often overlooked.

Lola currently works in two contrasting main series. On one hand, she concentrates on the theme of construction machinery, industrial sites and harbors, and on the other hand on the world of mosses and lichens. Macro- and microscopic. And what all those subjects have in common are fascinating surfaces, textures and colors which also are the keystones of painting. Decaying layers of paint on a rusty surface have a lot in common with microscopic growing organisms, and both an excavator shovel and a stone covered with lichens are turned into jewels on the canvas.

Lola’s paintings are meticulously composed, cropping and isolating the depicted subject. Like a scientist, she identifies and analyzes a subject that she has encountered and focuses on its own and unique characteristics. Through magnifying examination in detail of these elements, the familiar becomes foreign. A provocation to intrigue the viewer to question the form presented.

Ships and machines alike are painted with industrial varnishes of vibrant colors that quickly corrode when exposed to the weather and an intensive use. She is particularly interested in these marks of time on the brightly colored surfaces, which she portrays with great attention to details.
The compositions are calm, large-scaled and play with the contrast between a surface that approximates the flatness of the picture surface, and an illusionistic three-dimensionality. Large surfaces of color alternate with small, precisely painted details. The pictures are often relatively large-format in proportion to their subject matter. The inherent brutality of the male-dominated construction and naval world is turned into contemplation in these paintings.