Nuria Miró

Nuria Miro was born in 1961 by the sea, in Alicante, and she understands the moods of the Mediterranean the way you only can when you have watched them your whole life. She grew up in the narrow streets of the Barrio de la Cruz, the old town, with the Castillo de Santa Barbara above her and the coast below, and she spent a good part of her childhood watching clouds throw shadows across the landscape.

Those shadows are still in the paintings. Long shadows are one of the defining features of her compositions, which are dreamy and sun-bleached and carry a nostalgia that is difficult to manufacture. Her familiarity with that coastline is what gives the work its authenticity: she is not painting a place she visited.

She shares adjoining studios with her husband, the painter Antonio Garcia Soler, and they work close enough to influence each other daily. Their daughter, Nuria Garcia Miro, is a painter too, which makes three artists in one family and three bodies of work that keep circling the same sea. Alongside Alicante, the quieter beauty of Ibiza turns up in some of her pieces.