The zoomed-in paintings of Alejandra Moros ask you to fill in the gaps

So often can portraiture run stale, or worse, derivative. Then comes along an artist like Alejandra Moros, whose talent refreshes the medium with colourful, uncomfortable, fun and intricate paintings. Thanks in part to the encouragement of her mother from a young age and her time spent studying graphic design, Alejandra knew that the pursuit of unconventional art making was what she wanted to follow. Now, she takes dynamic reference photos to base her oil paintings on, transmuting real people in to fine art. “The reference photos I take have always been chosen because of a specific detail in them, so I began zooming in to that detail from the start,” she tells It's Nice That. “I think a lot about placeholders and how we feel a need to define context, even if it’s incorrectly. I’ve loved seeing someone try to figure out which part of the body bends in the way presented.”

Colour plays a key role in her work, too. Alejandra describes colour as a “way to bring someone out of reality” through its “rich, artificial” properties. “At the end of the day, these are composed imitations of vulnerability, not true experiences of it.” Whilst Alejandra admits it can often be an “overwhelming” task to create the large-scale paintings, the reception she gets from her audiences always makes it worthwhile.