Laura Pretto Vargas

Combustion is a painting that simmers with emotional intensity—an eruption of feeling captured mid-flare. Saturated in deep crimsons, glowing pinks, and burning embers of orange, the work evokes the volatile edge where desire, anger, and transformation converge. It’s a portrait of heat—both literal and psychological—where nothing is still, and everything pulses with life.

 

The upper portion smolders with shadowy maroons, while the center and lower sections ignite in fiery waves, creating a sense of combustion from within. The gestural marks—some blurred, some sharp—mirror the visceral nature of emotional release, the kind that builds in silence until it breaks into flame.

 

This is not destruction for destruction’s sake, but a necessary burning down of what no longer serves. In Combustion, fire becomes metaphor: for catharsis, for passion, for the courage it takes to let yourself unravel and begin again.

 

It’s a work that asks:

What needs to burn

for something new to rise?