Laura Pretto Vargas

Skin is an intimate, visceral meditation on vulnerability, memory, and the traces we carry beneath the surface. Rendered in a palette of raw reds, fleshy pinks, and ghostly whites, the composition evokes the tender layers of the human body—both physical and emotional. The brushstrokes move like sensations across a nerve ending: some are light and fleeting, others heavier, more insistent, like echoes of a wound or a whispered touch.

 

The background’s soft warmth contrasts with the restless gestures layered on top, suggesting the complexity of what it means to inhabit a body—especially one that remembers, reacts, and reveals. This is not a painting of skin as surface, but of skin as a threshold: between inside and outside, exposure and concealment, desire and defense.

 

Like a diary etched in gesture, Skin invites viewers to lean in close—to read between the strokes, and feel what words often fail to name.

 

It’s a painting about what lives just beneath the visible.

And how sometimes, to be soft is the most radical thing we can do.