Dos gardenias

Dos Gardenias comes from my deep relationship with music. There are songs that stay with you forever, that live rent free in your mind and heart, becoming part of your emotional vocabulary. This is one of them. A song so tender, so honest, that it almost demands to be painted — as if sound alone is not enough to hold it.

Dos Gardenias is one of the most beautiful Cuban boleros I know. It carries the kind of romance that feels pure and fragile at the same time. It speaks of love with absolute devotion, longing for eternity, while quietly accepting that love is not always forever — that it can fade, change, or even die. That contradiction is what makes it so human.

In the song, love is measured with two gardenias. Such a simple gesture, yet so powerful. Two flowers as a symbol of everything that is felt but cannot be fully explained. In this painting, the man jumps with joy, holding those two gardenias in his hands. He is alive in that moment. His heart is open, clean, and unguarded.

The red sunset behind him speaks of intensity — passion, warmth, but also the awareness that the day will end. He is surrounded by grass, grounded, connected to life, to the earth. As in many of my works, the figure is transparent, without skin. I want the emotions to be visible — multicoloured, moving, travelling through the body. Because that’s how love feels to me: not contained, not tidy, but vibrant and overwhelming

"Technique painting: Acrylic, Oil, Chalk, Oil Pastels on Canvas and spray paint on canvas 40" by 32"