Pure colour

These are paintings where colour is the subject and there is nothing else to find. Stripes at exact intervals, a lozenge of graded blues, a field of vertical lines that bends as you move past it. They are made to be looked at slowly and from a distance, and they change when you move.

The lineage is Venezuelan and it is not incidental. Marcano names Carlos Cruz-Diez, Jesús Rafael Soto and Alirio Oramas among her influences, alongside Sempere, Vasarely, Klee, Calder and Riley — the kinetic and optical traditions of Caracas and of Europe, which for a Venezuelan painter are the same inheritance seen from two sides.

Several of these carry a second thing under the colour. Homage to Wren and its study were made for the Wren300 anniversary and hold faint drawings of his architecture, incised into the surface so they appear only in raking light. Universe and the Red and Blue works are built from physical strips with metal studs, so the picture has real depth and casts its own shadow.

Vertical stripes in pink, orange, blue, teal, red and violet on a warm grey-brown ground, with a broad band of gold leaf at the centre; faint architectural drawings of domes and columns are incised across the whole surface.

Homage to Wren2023 · Pure colour

Dense fine white vertical lines on black, bowing and narrowing across the canvas so the surface appears to ripple, interrupted near the centre by one red and two yellow lines.

Portrait of a Cat2023 · Pure colour

On a turquoise ground, a large diamond built from nested chevrons in graded blues, with a single orange ring at its centre; narrow darker blue stripes run down both edges.

Abstract (January)2022 · Pure colour

A deep navy ground crossed by grey bars — horizontal in the upper left, vertical in the lower left — with bright orange lines forming a large open diamond and one orange vertical.

Abstract2022 · Pure colour

Six tall vertical bars on a copper ground, each graded from blue at the top through green to bronze at the bottom, like light failing down a row of windows.

Lockdown2022 · Pure colour

Bright vertical stripes — orange, lime, cyan, pink, red, lilac, blue, green — on unprimed linen, with small marks of gold leaf clustered at the centre.

Study for the Wren Anniversary Painting2022 · Pure colour

Vertical red and yellow stripes across the whole canvas, with small domed silver studs scattered in a loose diagonal band through the centre and a row of them along the top and bottom edges.

Universe2020 · Pure colour

Three panels of raised red strips separated by narrow blue channels, a wide central panel flanked by two narrow ones, each strip pinned with small metal studs top and bottom.

Red and Blue Triptych2020 · Pure colour

Evenly spaced vertical red and blue stripes filling the canvas, with a row of small metal studs along the top and bottom edges.

Red and Blue2020 · Pure colour