Creator of naive-expressionist portraits & surreal galactic dreams. Exploring fragility and infinity through two distinct visual universes.
Personal Life and Resilience Story
Traffic Accident (age 14): She became paralyzed from the waist down after a serious accident. She held on to
life with art with the watercolors and pencil sketchbooks her mother brought her during her hospital days.
Childhood and Moves: She grew up in different cities of Europe in the home of a diplomat father and an art teacher mother; each new city added new colors to his inner drawing diary.
Family Life: She lives alone in Lisbon with her 7-year-old daughter Sofia; her husband died during an aid mission years ago.
Ariana Solis
I was 14 when an accident changed my body forever. I couldn’t move — but my imagination kept moving. In silence, I saw swirling colors and emotions trying to speak.
When I first held a brush, I found a voice. It whispered what I couldn’t say.
Art became my breath. I studied, I grew. I loved, I laughed. Then I lost him. My husband. And the pillowcase that held my grief — finally burst.
Now I live with my 7-year-old daughter. In her, I see both my past and my future.
That’s why these figures are as they are:
Simple faces — not everything needs explaining.
Large heads — thoughts that had no room.
Faraway eyes — stuck between memory and hope.
Silent lips — because pain is quiet.
Red cheeks — because the heart still bleeds… and still loves.
This is me...
Not just brushstrokes — layers of soul.
And my pillowcase now holds not only sorrow, but hope.
My education and career journey
2006–2010: University of Seville, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Painting (Honors)
2011–2013: University of Lisbon, MA in Contemporary Art
2014–2019: Solo exhibitions in contemporary art galleries in Lisbon and Barcelona (canvas, mixed media)
Art Style andTechniques
Color and Texture: Layers of pastels, acrylics, mixed media and digital collages – dense textures, vibrant contrasts.
Figuration: Exaggerated anatomical proportions, long-form necks and a flow of emotion in facial expressions.
Line and Space: Sharp black contours, minimalist yet saturated color blocks in the background; simple backdrops that highlight character.
Theme: Tension between fragility and strength; hope, resistance and the driving inner voice of the human spirit.
Vision and Mission
She shares art, which she sees as the only power that connects to life, by combining her disability experience and motherhood consciousness. Her works are like a manifesto of freedom nourished by boundaries.
