Mariella Smilas

Painting (MA)

'saudade, saudade, saudade...', 2025. Acrylic, plaster, oil, spray paint, graphite, charcoal, ink, watercolour, oil stick, staples, thread on canvas, 200 x 190cm

'por favor, fica', 2025. Acrylic, oil, spray paint, graphite, charcoal, ink, watercolour, oil stick, staples, thread on canvas, 200 x 190cm

'i painted to not speak', 2025. Acrylic, plaster, oil stick, spray paint, graphite, charcoal on canvas, 180 x 180cm

'i miss you even when i am with you', 2024. Acrylic, graphite, watercolour, spray paint, thread on canvas, 180 x 150cm

About

Mariella Smilas (b. 1999) is a Portuguese-British artist based in London.

Her practice begins in the spaces between what is said and what is felt – where language begins to fray and something more instinctive starts to emerge.

At the heart of her work is a search for a language within language: a form of communication that drifts between clarity and sensation.

Text is central. Fragments of personal writing are torn apart and reassembled, layered, obscured, and repeated to create a visual language where meaning flickers in and out of focus. Through painting, she navigates experiences too heavy to carry or too fragile to touch, working through cycles of remembering and forgetting, revealing and concealing.

Each piece becomes an act of stitching time, where memory, language, and material converge. In this in-between space, the emotional and tactile are brought to the surface, inviting the viewer into a tension between what can be said and what can only be felt.

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