Cadogan Gallery, London, proudly presents Z I L V E R, the latest and largest solo exhibition by Dutch artist Nuria Maria to date, open from April 24 until May 24, 2025. Known for her refined explorations of light, space, and movement, Maria’s latest body of work captures the fleeting beauty of nature, distilling it into poetic simplicity.
Inspired by the ever-changing beauty of the natural world, Maria captures the iridescent silver tones of willow leaves in the Limburg countryside, where her studio overlooks rolling hills and ancient trees. Much like an Impressionist painter capturing the transient play of light and atmosphere, she distills these fleeting moments into poetic, dreamlike compositions. As the wind moves through the landscape, trees and grasses momentarily transform into shimmering silver, their hues shifting with the changing light—an ephemeral beauty that lies at the core of her work.
Z I L V E R embodies this delicate interplay of movement and emotion, translating the sensations of joy, lightness, and beauty into layered, tactile forms. Both enveloping and grounding, her works pulse with an organic rhythm, mirroring nature’s impermanence. Maria’s work reflects the essence of Camus’ philosophy—not just the idea of an invincible summer but the quiet resilience found in nature’s cycles. Even in the fleeting, inconstant shifts of light and form, there is a sense of continuity and renewal, a reminder that beauty endures despite its transience. For Maria, this connection between landscape and emotion evokes a profound sense of homecoming, where memory and place merge in a luminous, ever-shifting dialogue.
Poetry has long been an integral part of Maria’s practice, bridging the visual and the verbal to create a deeper emotional resonance. Rooted in her early years as a musician, writing has remained a parallel form of expression, offering an intimate glimpse into her creative process. This poetic sensibility infuses her work with rhythm and nuance, enriching the dialogue between image and feeling. The poem featured in the exhibition catalogue reflects this profound connection between light, memory, and emotion. More than just words, it becomes an extension of her artistic language—transforming fleeting moments into a sensory and visual experience, where language and form intertwine in quiet harmony.
Maria describes, “For me, light is always connected to feeling – whether it’s a certain time of day, a season, or a fleeting moment. The play of light through the trees, the way the wind shifts colours – it all creates a sense of presence, of being fully in a moment.”
Building upon her distinctive aesthetic, Maria balances the abstract and the figurative, allowing forms to emerge organically from her compositions. While her practice has predominantly centered on acrylic on linen, this exhibition marks an exploration of new materials and techniques. Her use of water-mixable oil paint alongside rougher canvases, jute, and raw linen imbue the paintings with a deeply tactile, earthy quality. These textured surfaces reinforce its organic essence, creating a natural harmony through soft gradients, delicate transparencies, and layered colour compositions to leave a timeless, meditative atmosphere where the interplay of surface and pigment mirrors the fleeting beauty of nature itself.
For me, light is always connected to feeling – whether it’s a certain time of day, a season, or a fleeting moment.
Nuria Maria
© Text and Photo Courtesy of Cadogan Gallery, Photography by Richard Gaston
