Barbara

Bárbara is a housewife who works peeling potatoes at the Paloquemao market in Bogotá. Each day, she repeats that mechanical gesture with hands weathered by the years, while her mind slowly fades among the folds of forgetfulness. Bárbara has Alzheimer’s, and yet her face still holds a serene sweetness and an intact dignity that this work seeks to preserve.

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This oil on canvas portrait captures, with honesty and tenderness, the contrast between the fragility of memory and the strength of spirit. The pictorial technique, a fusion of realism and colorful expressionism, accentuates the lines of time on her face while illuminating her woven hat with soft tones that evoke the light of dawn.

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The work is a tribute to all elderly women who, despite physical or cognitive decline, continue to contribute silently to the everyday life of the city. Bárbara may not remember each day with clarity, but her presence is essential, her work is real, and her story, invaluable.

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Bárbara is part of the Colombian Models series, an artistic and social project that acknowledges and dignifies the labor of working women often invisibilized by urban routine. Each painting does not simply portray a face, it tells a life story.

 

A percentage of the sale of this work will be given directly to Bárbara, as a gesture of symbolic and affective justice.