Fractured Water - Original Painting

The ‘Vertical Rhythms’ collection is a body of drip paintings Guererra has been developing since 1990 — many decades of working with gravity as collaborator. Each painting begins with a palette knife: raised ridges and interruptions built across the canvas before a single drip falls. When the paint is poured — oil mixed with glykyd and thinner until the consistency is just right — it must navigate this terrain, splitting, pooling, and rerouting around each obstruction. One color is dripped, then another, the two mingling as they descend. Then the waiting begins. Layers must dry before the next pour, and a single painting takes shape over many weeks — pour by pour, pause by pause — until it finally feels resolved. Some never are. The results read like music: repeating verticals with their own tempo and cadence, evoking rainfall on glass, bark, or light through a forest. Up close, the surfaces reveal intricate ridges and rivulets — a record of every pour and every interruption, each drip finding its own way down.

"These paintings are a collaboration between control and surrender. I begin with a palette knife, building raised areas across the canvas — interruptions the paint will have to reckon with. Then I drip: one color, then another, watching how they mix and where they're forced to change course. The consistency has to be exact — oil mixed with glykyd and a little thinner — fluid enough to travel, thick enough to leave a record. Then I wait. It dries; I pour again. Weeks pass this way. There's a moment when a painting finally tells me it's resolved — and some never do. I've been working this way since 1990, and gravity still surprises me." — Teodora Guererra