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Remedios Varo
I’m a little obsessed right now.
It’s funny how things that you’ve carried along with you for no particular reason suddenly become intensely evocative and meaningful as your life shifts. I was introduced to Remedios Varo’s art in high school. I knew nothing of art (and, let’s be honest, I still don’t), but it resonated, somehow. The texture, the unabashed femininity, the mystical elements, the surrealism….
I just loved it. It reminded me something familiar, yet somehow…unsettling. Something I knew so well, but was weary of — looking at her art, I’m reminded of the trepidatious steps and caution with which I descended the cold, dark steps into my grandparents’ basement.
Now, as I stand on the precipice of a completely different life than the one I planned for, the unnerving and the mystical nature of her artwork has a degree of comfort to it. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I’m certain that there are things at play that I could not possibly understand, and might — might — understand retrospectively, with the distance of years and miles between me and this place.
I don’t want to spend too much time explaining these images — I tend to just stare at them and lose myself in the depth of this world that she created. It’s meditative, and somehow begins to offer resolution to an internal conflict I’m only just beginning to recognize, and haven’t yet been able to name.
