At the end of February, Uma López arrived in Los Cabos with a mission that was both artistic and emotional. She would construct, through painting, a story that she had begun to imagine in Dubai and that she would finish materializing under the trees and the calm of Cabo San Lucas.
Invited by José Luis Madrigal, General Manager at Los Cabos Golf Resort, Trademark Collection by Wyndham, who was captivated by her work, Uma accepted without hesitation. “I’ve been living in Dubai for three years, and I came to visit my family. What better excuse than to come and work on something I love as much as painting and storytelling,” she says. Thus was born Bloom, a series of pictorial works that revolve around loss, love and the beauty that can emerge from grief.
The narrative that brings this collection to life features Elena, a woman separated from her husband, a doctor treating the sick during an epidemic. One night, Elena sees her husband’s horse arrive alone, riding off into the mist. Thus begins a symbolic journey that leads her to the lake, to the flowers her husband planted in secret and to a letter that changes everything.
“All those times I came home late were to help others, but I was also a bit selfish. I dedicated myself to planting all these flowers because I knew that one day I would miss you”, says the letter he left behind. Uma explains that this work is also a tribute to what blooms even after death. “The collection is called Bloom because with the pandemic, a lot of death bloomed, but also a lot of love.
During the three days of the exhibition, Uma shared her work with visitors and locals who came to the place where she has been working for the last few months. “Here you can discover other worlds without having to leave your room or pay a ticket. Art does that,” she says as she looks back fondly on her experiences.
His creative process is intuitive, almost mystical. “I want to think that more than creating, I am discovering something that already exists, some whisper, some idea that went through my head. I paint characters that I feel live somewhere, even if it’s only inside me”.
Uma has a deep bond with melancholy. Since she was a child, she says, she understood that time is borrowed. This awareness has become the driving force behind her work: portraying emotions that never go out of fashion and that touch us all. “It’s never too late to learn art. It’s never too late to share what you think. Everything you look at today, films, poems, songs… once upon a time, someone thought it wasn’t good enough to share. But art is what proves we exist”.
As she finishes Bloom‘s latest piece, entitled The Absence of You, Uma is already thinking about her next collection. The cycle does not stop: one story finishes being told while another begins to be born, just like the flowers that bloom in Elena’s lake.
