Annelie Solis, the artist who rouses human empathy

«I am not intentionally trying to convey a message or a meaning. I am basically saying ‘look and see the beauty!’ The beauty is all around us: in every face there are a million colours and in every movement there is a world of expression», that is why Annelie Solis draws her colourful canvas. Her wish to remind you of the forgiven beauty of humanity leaves its mark on every artwork that she paints.

Annelise combines multicultural faces, dynamic and spiritual bodies, inspiring expressions and decorated backgrounds as if she perfectly knew what results she would get from her artwork; but things go differently, as she reveals recently to Visual Art: «To start painting, I get rid of the big white abyss that is staring at me. I just start spraying paint everywhere. Depending on what my splashes and brush stroke look like, then I will decide what I want to paint. I may feel a lot of energy from a piece and choose to paint a dancer. Inspiration can come from anywhere».

Despite her young age (she is 26), Annelie Solis, who lives in Trinidad, in South America near Venezuela, is able to transmit a profound knowledge of human feelings and empathy with people and their peculiar multiple aspects. However, there is one thing that always filters through Annelie’s canvas: a deep connection with the spectator through the distinct use of colour and trough the replication of realistic facial expression. «Art is more than visually pleasing images. Art is more than visually pleasing images. Art speaks to the subconscious mind in a language the conscious mind does not understand, indeed does not even hear. In this way, artists have unimaginable power. It is this understanding that guides my current work».

Annelie’s professional training is practically this kind of inborn and unimaginable power; she actually did not attend university, because she thought that the theoretical aspect of art was boring. She took some art courses and, after two small exhibitions on «sure-seller-painting», as she defined her early artworks, Annelie decided to focus her third eyes and her art on something that reflect more her style and vision of people and life. Photos of people taken from daily life and journeys, in fact, inspire Annelie; actually, a lot of her subjects are uprooted from their natural habits, from Mother Nature, from somewhere in India, in South America, in Africa or in Canada. «I love different cultures. It is definitely something I gravitate to. And our local culture is adorable», she said about her native country, Trinidad.

After, she would create a connection between her art and other people; what we have in common but thinking, deep inside of us? Subconscious: something that inspires you without your desire and that is your real and pure reflection. So Annelie would explore symbolism as a vehicle to connect the spectator with his subconscious to the artwork and consequently to other human beings: for instance, the tree of life, the lotus flower, which is a third eye symbol, also known as the inner eye, the gate that leads within to inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness; and the spiral, which represents creation and a link to the divine. All of them and many more frequently adorned the paintings.

Feelings and sensations like that are quite left behind because of our modern and material society, but looking at Annelie’s artwork something seems to awake personal capability to understand and appreciate human peculiarities and attraction. «My mission is to enliven the human spirit and inspire a celebration of life which is beauty and divinity». Therefore, the artist prefers to use the human figure to personify such universal themes as love, harmony, gratefulness and devotion, because «We can look into another human’s eyes and feel life flowing through them and through ourselves. So I paint personifications».

Into Annelie’s artworks, there is a fabulous meeting of dream and real life; and what emerges from brilliant colours and inspiring vibrations of her canvas is exclusively the best part of both. «What I portray in my recent paintings is truth to me. They all speak of spirituality, awakening, awareness, wisdom, and they all speak to the imagination and through the subconscious», as she revealed to the Living the Beauty Way in 2013, when she also reported «Someone told me recently that they would describe my work as “the human spirit”». Even now, I couldn’t have said it better.