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In the past, I defended my paintings shouldn't have a lot of explanation "why", so the viewer could see them from their own lens. But, with time, I learned that sharing my process wouldn't take away from the image, just add to it. And more and more so lately, painting has a way of pulling the words out of me again. So a lot of these paintings have a pairing with words I put together - some kind of poetry - or words from others who just got stuck in my head and had to be put in paint. And now I couldn't show one without the other, without feeling that something was missing.
Ana Machado
Paintings in single sheet by year. Paintings in sketchbooks in the end.
2023
2023
These broken pieces are mine
40 x 30 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
September 2023
I don't have to break myself
In all these parts
Just to fit all the places
That needed me as glue
For people who wouldn't even care
That I'm broken too.
- Ana Machado
Forest Soul
40 x 30 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
September 2023
Am I still looking?
40 x 30 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
September 2023
I know I'm a villain in the story in your head
40 x 30 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
August 2023
I know I'm a villain in the story in your head
But sometimes I wonder
Do you know what you are
In mine?
- Ana Machado
Moonglow
50 x 40 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
August 2023
I treated you like the sun
But all this time you were a moon
Controlling all of my seasons
And never showing all of you
Now my world stopped spinning round
Stuck in this endless moonless night
And I know I never saw your true face
But I still miss the glow.
- Ana Machado
I still crave a freedom I've never met
18 x 26 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
August 2023
I still crave a freedom I've never met
Not even sure what it even is
Just that it is never truly here
Something holding me back
Sometime always not quite right
Somewhere always in between
Why do I keep on craving freedom
in this forever endless unknown
not knowing if it even exists?
- Ana Machado
And you still refuse to cry
26 x 18 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
August 2023
I have painted more crying eyes
Than I have ever allowed me days
To have them be mine.
In a way the paint are my tears
Carefully sliding in this other faces
With my hand holding the brush
That puts them there.
I am trying to decide
In this analogy of escaping pain
what makes the hand move?
- Ana Machado
Heart
40,5 x 30,5 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
August 2023
You took a heart and made a prison
Like a cage around your throat
And if the eyes are the windows
What are the bars made of?
- Ana Machado
Dismantled Almosts
41 x 31 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
June 2023
“I am a collection of dismantled almosts”
(Anne Sexton)
Loneliness
38,9 x 27 cm
watercolor and pen on watercolor paper 100% cotton
June 2023
The light was left behind you
and the only path this spiral life has
will never take you there again.
She will turn and turn again,
each time a lower low
until there’s no more light
to even see the shape
of the dark feelings that came knocking again.
And I’m not sure if it’s more lonely to be alone
or in a room full of people
who can’t see your ghosts around me.
- Ana Machado
Survival in a permanent earthquake
(vs living)
41 x 31 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
May 2023
I still remember the exit plans
6 years old me had to know
In case a earthquake hit the school
I still remember that exact classroom
The color of the tables
You had to lay below
Before we got running
All together
through that corridor
Down the stairs
to the playroom
to a place that they deemed safer
I still have the lists
The backpack
The plans
Sometimes I wonder
Am I more equipped to survive
Than to live?
More apt to runaway
Than to stand still
And live?
When have we ever learned that?
To not having plans
And contingency plans
And lists
And things to do “if”
Or “just in case”
When was living
Ever taught ?
When did survival
became skin?
- Ana Machado
2022
2022
Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones
41 x 31 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
December 2022
“Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones”
Really small part of the poem “The Nutritionist” by Andrea Gibson
You cannot live in castles built inside your head
41 x 31 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
December 2022
And sometimes you forget,
you cannot live in castles
built inside your head.
- Ana Machado
How much heartbreak does it take?
40 x 30 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
December 2022
How many times
Can you get up
Before you can’t?
(They want you to say
It’s the same number
of times you fall
But you don’t trust them)
It gets so hard each time
You just know
There is a limit somewhere
So
How many falls does it take?
How many lost futures?
How many summers?
How much heartbreak does it take?
- Ana Machado
Tired
41 x 31 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
September 2022
"I was full of letters I hadn't sent you"
(Anne Sexton)
Memories from land and sea
41 x 31 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
July 2022
Dream Catcher
40 x 30 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
June 2022
2021
2021
I thought you were falling, so I gave you one of my roots.
And now you are flying and I'm out of balance
55 x 33 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper stretched over untreated wood for about 5 months (that stained the background)
June 2021
I thought you were falling,
so I gave you one of my roots.
And now you are flying
and I'm out of balance.
- Ana Machado
What if the ocean was a place inside you
and you no longer knew how to swim?
41 x 31 cm
watercolor and white acrylic on watercolor paper 100% cotton
April 2021
I am sleepwalking on an ocean of happiness
I cannot baptize myself in
18 x 25 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
February 2021
“I am sleepwalking
on a ocean of happiness
I cannot baptize myself in”
Really small part of the poem “Explaining My Depression to My Mother”
Hope is a waking dream
18 x 25 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
January 2021
Some things are not to be said
40 x 30 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
January 2021
2020
2020
Your eyes are full of language
18 x 25 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
December 2020
Not every girl survives the forest. Sometimes she becomes it.
40 x 30 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
November 2020
Not every girl survives the forest.
Sometimes she becomes it.
Sometimes the darkness finds you,
the brambles grow thick around you.
But there are flowers amidst the thorns,
a sweet fragrance promising a happy ending,
dangerous and desirable at once.
Lay down your swords, there is no way in.
Untouchable beauty -
she grows tangled, twisted, and climbing.
She wears a crown of twilight, a blanket of thistledown.
Princess of fingers pricked, princess of blood.
Poem "The Princess & the thorns"
by Catherine Garbinsky
Summer's End
41 x 31 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
October 2020
And you didn't even realize
it wasn't just the Summer
that was ending.
But how do you accept an ending
of what never really begun?
- Ana Machado
Islander
26 x 37 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper
August 2020
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.”
(Isak Dinesen)
2019
2019
Turning Point
18 x 25 cm
watercolor and pencil on watercolor paper 100% cotton
October 2019
A moment passing.
The magic frozen in the details.
The unfinished end
of what never really began.
- Ana Machado
Inside | Outside
40 x 30 cm
watercolor and white acrylic
on watercolor paper
September 2019
You could never know it
That bellow the surface and the flowers
the ground is melting
into something all to familiar
to even have a name
You could never know it
That some days
it almost isn’t real
because some pretty masks
are harder to remove
by the end of the day
You could never know it
Because at the end of the day
sometimes
even I don’t know
You could never know it
Because even if you asked,
the same old 4 letter answer
would be enough
You could never know it
Because I didn’t want you to.
- Ana Machado
Holding hope
41 x 31 cm
watercolor and white acylic on watercolor paper 100% cotton
August 2019
You hold her
like she's not made of smoke.
Like she isn't fleeting
and forever requiring change.
Change the color,
change the shape,
change the expectations
you had before.
And you still hold her.
Forever changing
and breaking
and still,
somehow, there.
Maybe it's because of the holding.
Maybe she isn't real but a lifeline to real.
Maybe she's what you hold
so you can live in the future
when the present isn't enough.
- Ana Machado
The Circle of This
41 x 31 cm
watercolor and china ink on watercolor paper
March 2019
Why does it feel like a never ending circle?
Wanting it to be over once again.
Then once again stuck in it.
The never ending wanting to escape.
- Ana Machado
Inner Struggle
26 x 18 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper
February 2019
Sometimes
your mind is your worst enemy.
And sometimes
you just have to stop.
(And try again.)
And
again.
- Ana Machado
2018 and before
2018 and before
Memories of you
(you are the storm)
22,9 x 30,5 cm
watercolor and white acylic on watercolor paper
November 2018
Memories floating
in the whirlwind sea
of my thoughts.
Like a storm you hit
and I'm a ship waiting to be wrecked
but never quite sinking like before.
You learn to get back up,
back at your feet,
even if inside there's so much water
that you sometimes forget
you were already drowning
long before the first wave.
And I see you in everything,
memories floating in the little details,
a distant saying inside my head
telling me to go on
and conquer the storm,
but most days I no longer remember
the sound of your voice.
- Ana Machado
Dejá Vu
28 x 35,6 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper
April 2018
Flowers in you
41 x 31 cm
watercolor and white acylic on watercolor paper 100% cotton
July 2017
Maybe
41 x 31 cm
watercolor on watercolor paper 100% cotton
July 2017
Sketchbooks
Sketchbooks
Will be updated shortly. In the meantime most of the works can be seen on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/anamachadoart/
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