Gestural painter exploring intuition and color in Mérida
Amelia Opalinska is a gestural painter from Poland whose intuitive and expressive work merges color, gesture, and memory. Based in Mérida, Yucatán since 2013, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice that includes painting, photography, and writing. Trained in photography—holding a B.F.A. and having exhibited at institutions like SITE Santa Fe and The Gerald Peters Gallery—she transitioned more fully into painting after relocating to Mexico, where she continues to expand her creative language.
Background and Artistic Focus
Opalinska’s painting style is rooted in spontaneous process and personal narrative. Her work often includes a strong figurative component that diverges from realism, focusing instead on emotional resonance and visual energy. Using drips, scratches, stains, and irregular brushwork, she builds dynamic compositions where color and gesture coexist with vulnerability and intensity.
Trapitos al Sol: A Turning Point
Her 2023 solo exhibition Trapitos al Sol at El Zapote Gallery marked a significant moment in her career. The show featured paintings inspired by intimate experiences, many rooted in her life in Yucatán. The title—colloquially meaning “airing out one’s laundry”—reflected the confessional tone of the work. The paintings revealed an unfiltered engagement with memory, gesture, and material, establishing a clear direction for her evolving visual language.
Memory and Intuition in Her Work
This emphasis on personal experience and spontaneous process has remained a central thread in her practice. Each painting becomes a space where memory and material intuition interact, resulting in forms and textures that often escape conscious planning. This approach gives her work a sense of openness and immediacy that invites contemplation without imposing meaning.
Assemblage and Installation Practice
In recent years, Opalinska has expanded her practice to include assemblage and installation. In the 2024 exhibition Eyes, Needles, and Fireflies. The Story of Things, she presented poetic compositions using found objects, arranged with a similar intuitive sensibility as in her paintings. This spontaneous method privileges intuition over formal structure, blurring the lines between image and object.
Magic Lurks in Color and Recent Work
Her 2025 solo show Magic Lurks in Color deepens this exploration, offering works that combine blocks of color, abstracted figures, and expressive mark-making. These images, while formally diverse, maintain the emotional depth and intuitive energy that characterize her entire body of work. Opalinska continues to build a language that is as visceral as it is poetic—one rooted in presence, memory, and the material traces of gesture.
