El Umbral

"El Umbral" is a square-format work—12 × 12 inches—that condenses centuries of Caribbean history into a single glance. From the foreground of living stone, the eye travels along the colonial wall until it reaches the unmistakable dome of the Santa María Magdalena de Pazzi Cemetery in Old San Juan, finally losing itself in the deep blue of the Atlantic Ocean.

Belonging to the series Eternity, this piece explores the paradox of time standing still in places that have witnessed everything: the passage of fleets, storms, entire generations. The choice of oil pastel as a medium is not accidental—its warm opacity and its ability to build layers of color with material density directly engage with the solidity of the architecture it portrays.

The preparation of the support is an integral part of the work: two layers of handmade gesso—the first with kaolin applied with a palette knife, the second with organic fiber applied with a brush—give the wood a texture that the artist actively works, visible in the roughness of the rocks in the foreground and in the impasto of the clouds.

A solitary figure, almost dissolved in the penumbra of the stone, anchors the scene in the human. Its discreet presence is the conceptual heart of the work: it is us, standing on the threshold between the past and the horizon, between the constructed and the eternal.