Some artworks unfold slowly, like a whispered memory returning from a dream. Marialynda Valdez’s Afterlife is one such vision. Arresting yet tender, this watercolor painting captures the gaze with its delicate balance of fragility and splendor. At its center, a skeleton rises not as a symbol of fear or decay, but as a monument to transformation. It gazes upward, serene and unburdened, surrounded by a lush bloom of roses, lilies, and lilacs, while vibrant butterflies drift around its form like sacred omens in mid-flight.

Featured in Look at Me 2025, an international exhibition devoted to presence and self-revelation, Afterlife quietly insists on being seen. It invites viewers to reconsider the space between life and death, the visible and invisible, the known and the mysterious. Instead of retreating into darkness, Valdez brings death into the light—soft, warm, and full of color. The skeletal figure, draped in velvety purple flora, feels not cold or lifeless, but peaceful, almost radiant. The painting becomes a tribute to what lingers after we are gone: beauty, memory, change.

A symphony of contrasts plays out across the image. The structured bones are cradled by unruly blossoms; the delicacy of the butterflies meets the permanence of the skull. The sky melts from deep cerulean to soft cloud, an atmospheric gradient that suggests both dawn and dusk. In this liminal space, time seems suspended. The butterflies—symbols of rebirth, metamorphosis, and spirit—float as if released from the body itself, extensions of something immortal.

What gives the work its remarkable emotional resonance is Valdez’s command of watercolor. She allows the medium’s natural fluidity to soften the tension between subject and environment. Her washes are translucent yet rich, giving the composition a dreamlike aura while retaining clarity in form. Each petal and bone is shaped with care, yet the looseness of the pigment imbues them with motion, as though the entire painting is gently breathing.

Color plays a vital role in this visual narrative. Deep reds speak of passion and remembrance, whites of purity and farewell, while the intense violets ground the piece in mystery and mourning. The interplay between warm and cool tones reflects the duality at the heart of Afterlife: life born from death, and stillness blooming with emotion.

Marialynda Valdez, based in Phoenix, has spent the past six years refining her watercolor practice, using what she calls “siren washes of the water with rich pigments” to depict the bittersweet illustrations of her inner world. With Afterlife, she offers a deeply poetic reflection on the human experience—one that is not afraid to look at mortality, but rather, to see through it.

To explore more of her soulful visions, visit her Biafarin profile, where each painting carries the quiet pulse of emotion, memory, and transformation.