Seated on the Stairs by Raquel Reis
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Watercolor pencil
Dimensions: 29 x 42 cm
Year: 2023
Price: $500.00 USD
Status: available
“Seated on the Stairs” began with a familiar summer moment in Brazil: a woman pausing on the staircase of my home, close to the iron gate that quietly defines the boundary between private life and the world beyond. Her posture carries a personal memory. I modeled the folded hands after my mother’s, allowing her presence to enter the work through a small, intimate gesture. I wanted the figure to feel both grounded and fluid, as though she belongs to the architecture while also resisting its limits. Deep greens move through the stairs and background, softening the separation between body and place. Her pink blouse and sandals bring warmth and individuality, while vibrant color, strong contours, and restless marks suggest an inner life that cannot be contained by a single outline. Using watercolor pencils with very little water allowed me to blend certain passages while preserving the immediacy of drawing. The dissolving boundaries between figure and ground reflect how memory works for me: people, rooms, gestures, and colors gradually become inseparable. I hope this work offers a sense of recognition, inviting viewers to remember the quiet poses and familiar spaces through which loved ones remain present.
Why collect this work?
The figure’s folded limbs and the staircase’s rigid bands compress a domestic pause into a study of how memory blurs body, furnishing, and boundary.
- Reis identifies the pose as a remembered scene in her Brazilian home and says she based the folded hands on her mother’s. That account clarifies why an otherwise ordinary seated posture carries the work’s personal emphasis.
- In the photograph, heavy contours divide the face into offset planes, while enlarged hands, crossed legs, and uneven sandals lock together near the sheet’s lower edge. Vertical bars at left and horizontal steps frame the figure without fully containing it.
- The documented watercolor pencil medium permits drawn hatching and passages of blended color to coexist. Here, repeated strokes remain conspicuous across skin, clothing, hair, and background, weakening any firm separation between figure and setting.
- Encountering this work foregrounds how portraiture can preserve someone through posture rather than likeness. Its specific conjunction of clasped hands, domestic architecture, and altered anatomy makes remembrance visible as reconstruction, not neutral record.
About the Artist
Raquel Reis
Raquel Reis is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in Madrid, ES.
Nationality: Brazilian
My work is rooted in sensation, perception, and gesture.
