The architecture of the soul
Exploring perception, memory, and human experience.
Damaris Codrea is a Swiss-based visual artist working primarily in abstract and conceptual painting, while also exploring photography and text. Her practice explores themes of identity, transformation, perception, and the human experience, using art as a way to better understand both herself and the world around her.
For Codrea, painting is far more than a visual pursuit. It is a process of self-discovery, curiosity, play, and investigation. Through the act of creating, she explores questions that cannot always be approached through logic alone, allowing meaning to emerge through observation, reflection, and making.
Her work is symbolic, conceptual, and deeply personal, balancing emotional intuition with structure and intention. As Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures.” This idea remains central to her practice, where the internal search for understanding shapes the external form of the work.
Damaris Codrea
Visual Artist
Zurich, Switzerland
Damaris Codrea, Visual Artist – Zurich, Switzerland
Her artistic practice developed through independent study, experimentation, and observation. Guided by curiosity and a deep interest in both materials and meaning, she gradually developed a visual language rooted in abstraction, symbolism, and material exploration.
Working with sand, marble dust, acrylics, and oils, she builds layered surfaces that become an essential part of the image itself. Texture lies at the heart of her work. It is not simply a visual element, but a fundamental way of constructing meaning, depth, and presence.
Fascinated by the physical qualities of matter, Codrea often incorporates geological materials directly into her paintings, transforming the canvas into a tactile landscape shaped through accumulation, erosion, revision, and discovery. For her, the material process is inseparable from the conceptual one.
Painting remains a space where experimentation, discipline, and play coexist as part of a continual process of exploration and learning.
Before focusing primarily on painting, Codrea built a foundation in design and photography, particularly black-and-white photography. These disciplines continue to influence her approach to composition, balance, contrast, and visual structure.
Her practice is informed by art history, philosophy, and a desire to understand how we perceive and interpret the world. Among the figures who have had the greatest influence on her thinking, Leonardo da Vinci remains especially significant. His curiosity, observational rigor, and lifelong commitment to learning continue to inspire her own approach to creative practice.
This multidisciplinary background allows her to move fluidly between conceptual thinking, material experimentation, and visual storytelling.
Form dissolves in favor of sensation.
Based in Zürich, Switzerland, Codrea draws significant inspiration from her travels, focusing intensely on rocky landscapes, geological formations, and the unique, isolated energy of islands.
Rather than depicting these subjects directly, she blends these external environments with her own inner world, translating their physical forms and textures into abstract, layered surfaces.
Her current work explores themes of transformation, origin, and how these forces shape human experience.
Through painting, she pursues a deeper understanding of both herself and life itself, treating the canvas as an indispensable medium for continuous growth and discovery.
