The pictorial universe of Rayana Rayo is inhabited by fabulous beings whose morphology is tied to the landscape of Recife — where she grew up and currently lives. Not only the geographical elements of the beaches, mangroves, and sea inform her practice, but also the atmosphere, the freshness of the breeze, the warmth of the sun, and the scent of the sea air. Likewise, the states of being and memories evoked by each of these elements are constitutive of her compositions.

Thus, in her creations, the inner and outer worlds dissolve into a single fluid in which the artist navigates — and invites us to join her — toward memories, projections, and desires, in flows that shift from side to side, submerge, and resurface.

Rayana’s work arises from inner drives permeated by affective experiences, desires, and impulses that unfold into images. Her practice is not confined to a formal exercise; it positions itself as a space of subjective elaboration, where each gesture and chromatic choice is tied to states of mind and to the urge to infuse matter with vital energy. For her, the canvas is not a mere support, but an object endowed with potency, charged with intention, memory, and presence.

From her surfaces emerge imagined landscapes that recall mountains, archipelagos, marine creatures, and hybrid beings. These images, at once familiar and distant, give shape to a world of their own—a pictorial biome where natural elements, invisible forces, and symbols of the unconscious coexist. Air, earth, and water intertwine in compositions that evoke an intimate terrain, functioning as a visual diary that draws from everyday life while reinventing it.

In this current, Rayo’s work also reveals itself as a dive into the unconscious. Circles suggesting cavities or spheres, as well as water, are persistent images in her work, and within the universe constructed by the artist, these symbols acquire psychoanalytic resonances. The “holes,” as the artist calls them, appear as pathways to the unconscious—a space for immersion, a reference to absence or lack, and also a place where desires and memories settle. In the same movement, immersion occurs in water, an element of flow and transformation, associated with a return to earlier stages and to a real and symbolic landscape that marks this current. This dynamic is reflected in her process, in which compositions emerge from abyssal spaces to reach treetops stirred by the wind at the heights of the islands.

By bringing these images closer together, Rayo opens a field of meanings that ranges from the enigma of absence—what is never fully filled—to the possibility of subjective recomposition. The void, as a constitutive lack, finds in water the promise of movement, dissolution, and regeneration. This tension, inscribed on the surface of the canvas, unfolds as a metaphor for the psychic process: to dive, to emerge, and to rework.

Greater complexity and ambiguity arise in these images when we notice that they are not, nor ever meant to be, definitive signs. With the shimmering of colors on the surface, the elements in the artist’s compositions remain perpetually mutable.

Thus, from the interior of the cavities, stems, trunks, and pulsating bodies sometimes emerge, revealing yet other holes or extensions that seem to reach toward other beings or turn back upon themselves. In this sense, by creating pulsating organisms in full bloom, blown by the wind or propelled by becoming, the artist’s works acquire a sensual character—not necessarily tied to sexuality, but pointing to the affects and effects of looking inward and toward the landscape—suggesting a process that seeks to dissolve these boundaries.

In her paintings, the landscape ceases to be a mere backdrop and becomes a character. Rayo creates dreamlike atmospheres in which hills, deep waters, and vegetal organisms take center stage. In these visual fables, the logic of the real does not oppose the imaginary: the two interpenetrate. The symbolic and the everyday coexist, allowing the artist to tell stories that extend beyond the canvas, in continuity with her own life.

Her works can also be understood as indirect self-portraits. Each form, each variation of color, conveys emotional states that traverse the artist. Works that evoke fantastic creatures or multi-headed monsters, for example, give shape to affects such as anger, fear, or bewilderment, while others reveal delicacy and moments of introspection. It is a process of self-knowledge in which painting means, at once, to recognize oneself and to transform.

For Rayana, artistic practice and life are intertwined. The act of painting is, therefore, both a rite of passage and a record of experiences: a way to symbolically mark her existence, the spaces she inhabits, her origins, the relationships she weaves, and how these are shaped by geographical, economic, and social materiality.

Thus, Rayo creates fables from what life offers her, expanding events, memories, and affects within her painting. By transforming the canvas into fertile territory for the imagination, she invents ways of being in the world. Her images are not limited to representing strictly imaginary or strictly real scenes; they establish fields in which the viewer is carried along by flows of experience and reworking similar to those undertaken by the artist.