Featured image: NEURONAS, [Spanish for: Neurons], Lourdes Rivera, 2019, mixed media, 48 x 36 in. / 121.92 x 91.44 cm.
In her mixed-media practice, Lourdes Rivera examines the unseen forces that shape human existence, microscopic life, elemental power, and inner perception.
Lourdes Rivera is a mixed-media artist whose work explores unseen realities, microscopic life, natural forces, and inner perception, through layered color and expressive abstraction.
Among Virus and Bacteria, We Live (2022), Campfire (2023), and My Eye from Within (2019) move between scientific awareness, natural phenomena, and psychological introspection. Rivera’s layered surfaces and vibrant color fields transform invisible or overlooked realities into immersive visual experiences, asking viewers to reconsider where life, beauty, and consciousness truly reside.
Among Virus and Bacteria, We Live, Lourdes Rivera, 2022, mixed media, 24 x 48 in. / 60.96 x 121.92 cm.
This expansive work visualizes the microscopic ecosystems that surround and inhabit us. Rivera translates bacteria and viruses, normally imperceptible to the naked eye, into a lively, almost celebratory field of color and form. Organic shapes float, collide, and multiply across the surface, evoking constant motion and interdependence. The composition balances fascination with unease, reminding the viewer that life exists in continuous immersion within these unseen structures. Rather than portraying threat, Rivera emphasizes coexistence, revealing microbial life as complex, dynamic, and integral to our survival.
Campfire, Lourdes Rivera, 2023, mixed media, 48 x 36 in. / 121.92 x 91.44 cm.
In Campfire, Rivera turns to fire as both subject and metaphor. Vertical, flame-like gestures rise through the canvas, rendered in sinuous strokes of gold, orange, and cool undertones that suggest heat and movement. The layered application of mixed media creates depth and rhythm, echoing the unpredictable behavior of flames. Fire appears neither purely destructive nor purely nurturing, but suspended between danger and beauty. Rivera captures its hypnotic quality, how it draws attention, commands respect, and reveals transformation through continual change.
My Eye from Within, Lourdes Rivera, 2019, mixed media, 12 x 12 in. / 30.48 x 30.48 cm.
This intimate work shifts inward, centering perception itself. An eye-like form emerges from dense layers of color, branches, and gestural marks, suggesting an internal landscape rather than a literal organ. The painting proposes vision as something active and internal, an awareness shaped by emotion, memory, and lived experience. By exposing what is usually unseen within the self, Rivera invites reflection on how reality is filtered through personal consciousness. The work aligns introspection with observation, collapsing the distance between seeing and being.
Across these three works, Lourdes Rivera explores immersion as a shared condition, whether biological, elemental, or psychological. Microorganisms, fire, and inner vision all operate beyond easy control, yet define how we live and understand the world. Through layered mixed-media surfaces and vibrant abstraction, Rivera renders the invisible visible, suggesting that meaning often exists beneath perception, waiting to be recognized rather than discovered.
Mitochondria I, Lourdes Rivera, 2025, mixed media, 36 x 24 in. / 91.44 x 60.96 cm.