Artist: Teresa Calem
Title: Daphne 12
Technique: Watercolor
Dimensions: 138 x 110 cm
Year: 2007

 Teresa Calem paintings remind us of traditional naturalistic portraits because of their realistic features and because she uses a frontal or profile viewpoint, but they are not actual portraits as they do not relate to any specific or real person. The faces are composed of details of diverse images. The result is a human physiognomy that surprises by its verisimilitude and vivacity.
 The exhibition presents a series of variations on the theme of Daphne, the Greek nymph, who, tired of fleeing from the love of Apollo, asks her father the river God Peneus to help her. He transforms her into a laurel-tree.
 Teresa, in her portraits captures the moment, fleeting, fragile and magic of this metamorphosis, in which the nymph of human form is transformed into a tree. The delicacy and subtlety of this passing moment are sublimated by the technique also subtle and delicate: the watercolour.