Marco Torres

Arizona above ground is incredibly diverse. With approximately 13 distinct biomes, the outdoor scenery can look vastly different in locations fairly close to each other. Below ground is similarly unique; Arizona is home a great many caves. One such cave, Coronado Cave, is on the smaller side at approximately 600 ft deep. It is a giant room with little spindly crawl-spaced offshoots in the crevices in its sides. It takes less than a minute to climb down past daylight’s reach.

​‘Entrance and Exit’ is, plainly put, a painting of Coronado’s entrance, and it’s exit. The way out looked far smaller from my vantage point, though we were only about 100 ft in. This is a magnified view of what the exit of the cave looked like when in my two climbing buddies and I turned our headlamps off to revel in the beauty of the dark. In contrast, the homogeneous white of the mountain highlights the path, and the hole which leads into the cave, which would otherwise look unceremonious from this angle. With as few details as possible, the mountain becomes defined by its shape and the cave it holds within. It is the underground that is the focus of attention.​

This wood panel is primed with watercolor gesso, which prevents the watercolor paints from soaking into the wood, allowing them to better blend and layer into each other. I also use India Ink layered over itself to achieve a uniform complete black not otherwise possible to do with watercolors alone. The composition is based directly on photographs I took while I was in Coronado cave and my memory. It is sprayed in a non-yellowing acrylic coating to protect it from moisture and smudging.