Daniella Portillo

Staring down the barrel of Daniella Portillo’s brooding landscapes, you’re transported into another world. Or the end of ours. Yet it’s the memory of a very real place, El Salvador, that guides Portillo’s brush.

In 2018, Portillo visited her grandfather in the Central American country known for both its mountainous terrain and Pacific lowlands. It was the first time since leaving the country for the U.S. at 7 years old that the young painter had revisited the house where she had once lived and spent her early childhood. 

On her return to New York, Portillo made studies from the visit. They were guided by the atmosphere and these revised impressions of a place she once knew so well. Although a little hazy, the mountains, dusty dirt tracks, and physical space betrayed through the years of rehashed memory came to resemble her earlier childhood experiences. The landscape stands visually ambiguous, each stroke echoing reclaimed moments from pastoral tranquility to lifeless atmospheres.  

Guided by memory and impression, Portillo will start her brooding paintings with a bright beaming colour, which she will then work over with layers of paint and varnish. Portillo methodically scrapes and sands back each layer, only to coat it with yet another layer of paint and varnish. A process that is laborious and is repeated over and over again.