Illustrations of innocence
Daniela Werneck, Crown & Crows, watercolor, 18 x 24.
Daniela Werneck creates storybooklike paintings in a traditional watercolor method that involves applying hundreds of layers of translucent pigment. These carefully crafted compositions featuring young girls, sometimes with fanciful surroundings, are odes to innocence, purity, and bygone seasons of life. Although in some instances the subjects find themselves in unstable circumstances, Werneck surrounds them with symbolically reassuring signs from nature, such as birds, flowers, and butterflies.
When Werneck began painting professionally, she focused on stories of foster-care children specifically, wanting to create awareness around this important cause. One of the paintings from that time, CROWN & CROWS, was painted just after a foster child left her home. “I wanted to paint her strong personality and her world—she was like a flower in the desert,” Werneck says. “The crown symbolizes her desire to belong to a family, and the crows symbolize her empty kingdom. Her constant resilience was admirable and taught us that the last thing you can lose in life is hope.”
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- Daniela Werneck, More Than I Am Today, watercolor, 30 x 22.
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- Daniela Werneck, The Retreat, watercolor, 24 x 18.
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- Daniela Werneck, Serene Mother, watercolor, 30 x 22.
In 2019, Werneck started a series focused on her South American culture. It was a revelation for the artist to reconnect with her heritage and create narratives representing her own memories and journey. Like some of her subjects, Werneck has experienced itinerant seasons of life, moving from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—where she was born and raised, and where she received a bachelor’s degree in interior design—to Australia and finally to Houston, TX, where she currently lives with her husband and children.
Over the past several years Werneck has been gaining recognition as she exhibits her work nationally. This year she won the Grand Prize in American Women Artists’ Spring Online Juried Show, and the Award of Merit in Watercolor Art Society-Houston’s International Watermedia Exhibition.
Still, her greatest reward is simply living the artist’s life. “My work never fails to offer me, and hopefully others, respite from the day-to-day routine and stresses,” she says. “It’s like dipping a brush into my soul, and when the result touches someone else’s soul, I feel the most incredible sense of achievement.” –Allison Malafronte
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- Daniela Werneck, The Sweetheart’s Message, watercolor, 20 x 16.
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- Daniela Werneck, The Black Letter and A White Canvas, watercolor, 18 x 24.
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- Daniela Werneck, The Great Kiskadee, watercolor, 22 x 30.
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- Daniela Werneck, The Swallow, watercolor, 20 x 16.
representation
RJD Gallery, Romeo, MI; www.danielawerneck.com