Maru Flores
Textured abstract painting · Guadalajara, Mexico
Work
Every piece is born from intuition. I paint without preliminary sketches, letting the process set the course: surfaces that crack, colors that emerge, silences that turn into movement. Texture is not an aesthetic device but a form of memory; every layer holds a decision, an emotion, a moment.
Cracks and Thickness
2025 · Acrylic on canvas
We are the sum of our cracks and thicknesses, and it is in those fractures that the most luminous truth of existence ignites. When I painted it I had no idea what I was doing; I only wanted to get my hands dirty and let the textures speak for me. In the end this piece emerged, and this is where everything began.
We grow in deep silence and bloom in vital chaos, holding the peace of the olive tree, the healing of the eucalyptus and the abundance of the money plant
2025 · Series · Acrylic on canvas
Three canvases, three plants that sustain: the olive tree, which keeps peace; the eucalyptus, which heals; and the money plant, which calls for abundance, all in chaos. And a fourth canvas, growing in silence. The brushstrokes, in a blue so deep, open across the white like foliage growing without making a sound: dense at the center, lighter toward the edges, as if the wind were moving them. The series speaks of the growth no one sees, the kind that happens in silence and in the depths, and that one day blooms right in the middle of chaos.
Cartography of the Inner Sea
2025 · Acrylic on canvas
A map of what moves within. I built the relief layer upon layer in deep greens and turquoises, like water currents seen from above, and then crossed it with golden veins in the manner of kintsugi, the Japanese technique that repairs broken ceramics with gold and turns the crack into the most valuable part of the piece. Here the fractures are not hidden: they trace routes, they mark the places I have already been through, and which today shine precisely because they broke.
Golden Sowing
2026 · Acrylic on canvas
How do you paint a legacy? This work closes a cycle of eight years of public service and the fight for justice. The idea was not only to paint the end of a chapter, but the sowing that remains: the solid green base represents the institution, intentionally fractured by golden veins, those seeds of integrity that stay in the foundations to flourish in the future. It is not about shining for a moment, but about lighting the way for those who come after.
Burn the boats
2025 · Acrylic on canvas
If you want to take the island, burn the boats. A night in deep blues, worked in layers and glazes, where you can barely make out the silhouette of a ship and the first red of the fire beginning to take it. Though, when I painted it, I wasn't thinking about ships, but about those decisions made with no way back, when it is no longer possible to return to the shore of before and the only thing left is to move forward.
Us
Acrylic on canvas
Some works are planned; others simply find a way to tell you who they are. I started this canvas without a clear idea, I only wanted to experiment with texture, divide the space and let the process speak. Days later I understood that, without seeking it, I had created seven fragments, exactly the ones that make up our family today, and each one became a color for each of us. Sometimes art does not reveal what we imagine, but what was already inside us.
My story
I am Maru Flores, an artist who paints from intuition and emotion.
It all began with a deep break in my personal and professional life. For years I have worked in an environment that demands control, logic and absolute rigor. Yet there came a moment when that structure was no longer enough, and I needed a different space to process, understand and rebuild myself.
Painting then appeared as an unexpected territory. The canvas became a place where there were no strategies, case files or right answers: only intuition, matter and silence. That first encounter marked a before and after. It was not a hobby or a distraction, but a true turning point, a breakthrough that transformed the way I inhabit myself and look at the world.
My inspiration comes from that contrast between order and chaos, between the rational demands of my legal profession and the absolute freedom I find when I paint. This project is the result of that constant dialogue between two seemingly opposite, but deeply complementary, worlds.
Process
I paint without a sketch and without a result in mind. Each piece begins with an emotion and is built with the matter, layer by layer, until it finds its own form.
Starting without a map
I don't work from sketches or reference images. I stand in front of the canvas with an emotion, sometimes with a very vague idea, and let the first gesture set the course. The rest is decided along the way: what stays, what gets covered, what breaks. Many times I only understand what I painted days later.
The material
I work with acrylic, flexible modeling paste and a palette knife. The paste is what builds the relief: I apply it, let it dry and return to it again and again. That is why my paintings have body: cracks, veins and thicknesses that change with the light and the angle from which they are viewed. When gold appears, it tends to live in the fractures, as a way of saying that what broke is also worth something.
Time
The process is not linear. Some pieces come out in an afternoon and others need weeks of layers, pauses and silences. The canvas is the place where I let go of the control that the rest of my days demands of me.
Commissioned work
I accept a limited number of commissions. Each one begins with a conversation: you tell me what you are living through or what you want to keep (a stage, a loss, a change, something you don't yet know how to name) and from there I paint. I don't work with literal references or colors chosen in advance, because that freedom is exactly what makes each piece unique.
The piece is delivered with a short text about its process and its emotional reading, and with a certificate of authenticity. If you would like to start one, write to me on Instagram or TikTok.
