Carolina Rodríguez Romero
Bogotá, Colombia (b. 1980).
Carolina Rodríguez Romero's coloured pencil drawings of children pay homage to childhood, to its vibrancy and colour, to its innocence and hope. She deliberately uses childlike strokes of the pencil to echo the energy of the subjects in her portraits and their irrepressible vitality.
In doing so, Carolina hopes that we all might remember what it was like to be a child and try to bring some of that very same energy and optimism into our adult lives. In her own words, "I believe in childhood, in the light that emanates from children. It's this essence that I try to materialize in my work."
Carolina's desire to depict this untouchable essence is a form of resistance against society's desire to control and tame the free spiritedness of childhood: "A child's essence is untouchable, it is alive, full of colour, and no one can alter that. Society might try to change this, to make us forget what it is to feel free, but it will never take away the child within us all, so full of life and color."
