The series opens with Madrid, a searing evocation of passion and layered history. Deep reds collide across the surface, thick and urgent, conjuring the fevered vibrancy of the Spanish capital. The gesture here is unapologetic — a city in perpetual motion, its beauty forged in movement and resistance.
In Madrid, Gina Keatley presents a canvas pulsing with the life and heat of Spain’s storied capital. Here, the color red dominates — but it is no simple red. Layered, fractured, and brushed with urgent strokes, the composition shifts between shades of blood, brick, and crimson wine, each hue embodying a different facet of the city’s emotional landscape.
The surface of the painting feels almost torn at times — scraped back, repainted, reasserted — mimicking the centuries of upheaval and triumph that define Madrid’s soul. From the passionate cries of flamenco singers to the defiant protests in Puerta del Sol, Keatley’s gestures capture a metropolis alive with struggle, joy, and unrelenting spirit. There is no effort to sanitize or romanticize; rather, the painting throbs with raw vitality, much like the streets of Madrid themselves, where history and modernity jostle for space.
The choice of abstraction is crucial. Keatley resists the easy temptation to depict recognizable symbols — no plazas, no cathedrals, no literal monuments — allowing the viewer instead to feel Madrid in a visceral, physical way. The layered reds speak of sun-scorched afternoons, of deep conversation over wine, of passionate arguments and reconciliations carried out under the amber glow of streetlamps. Within the textured paint, there are quieter areas too: pale flashes where energy softens, like the quiet courtyards hidden behind heavy stone walls.
Rhythmically, the piece suggests a kind of dance — not the polished performance of a stage show, but the spontaneous movement of bodies in a crowded square, responding intuitively to guitar and voice. Keatley builds this rhythm through overlapping brushwork, gestural sweeps, and abrupt interruptions that give the work its restless quality. It is an art of motion, not stasis.
Madrid is a city that has been both a political battleground and a cultural beacon. In Keatley’s work, this duality emerges clearly: the red evokes not just warmth and beauty but also tension and resilience. The work feels as if it has survived something — as if it bears the marks of its own creation, proud of its imperfections. Like the city itself, it insists on its right to exist with complexity and fire.
Ultimately, Madrid is less about place than about feeling. It captures the pulse beneath the stone, the heartbeat within the square. Keatley’s gift lies in her ability to translate this invisible life into a tactile surface that feels almost, impossibly, alive. The painting invites the viewer not merely to observe, but to remember — or perhaps to imagine — what it feels like to stand in Madrid, heart open to the heat, to the noise, to the sheer overwhelming beauty of it all.