A painting by Cinta Vidal rarely announces its disruption at first glance. Spaces appear calm, precise, entirely habitable. A sofa rests squarely against a wall. Light falls convincingly across plaster. Only after a moment does the orientation begin to shift. Ceilings become floors. Staircases diverge into impossible directions. Figures occupy the same architectural frame, yet obey different gravities.
Vidal’s worlds operate like hidden dimensions. The figures in her interiors exist in parallel realities, sharing space without ever fully intersecting. She refers to her compositions as “un-gravity constructions,” and the term is precise: the work is not about optical tricks. It is about how people can inhabit the same space and experience it entirely differently. Her paintings suggest that perception itself has layers — discrete yet overlapping, ordinary yet subtly alien. Each tilt, fold, and shift is deliberate, keeping human experience tangible while pointing at something beyond it.
What distinguishes her work is not the shifting orientation but the discipline that underpins it. Each plane is structurally sound. Shadows follow their own internal logic. Proportions hold. The impossible becomes credible through control. Alongside this rigour, her paintings also reveal a sensitivity to the materials, spaces, and objects that populate everyday life — an attentiveness nurtured by her earliest surroundings.
Born in Barcelona in 1982, Vidal spent her earliest years in a family home furnished with natural parquet floors and wooden furniture, reflecting a tradition of favouring natural materials. At ten, she moved with her family to Cardedeu, where they owned a toy shop. Vidal has described the shop — with its wooden toys and her father’s mechanical inventions — as an unexpected source of inspiration, a combination of play, design, and imagination that continues to inform the gravity-defying, multi-perspective worlds she builds today.
Drawing, she has often said, was never optional. It was constant. Buildings she encountered on holiday, people moving through cafés, and illustrations she admired all became subjects for her work. Through these experiences, she began to understand space and perspective in practical terms, observing how forms, light, and human movement interacted within a scene.
At sixteen, while studying Illustration at Escola Massana in Barcelona, she began working as an apprentice at the Castells Planas scenography workshop, a respected theatrical set studio in Barcelona. There she painted large‑scale scenery for opera, ballet, and theatre productions — work that demanded precision and sharpened her command of perspective.
That training remains visible in her studio practice. Although her compositions fracture orientation, they never collapse into chaos. Architecture comes first. Walls, stairs, and doorways act as anchors. Once the structure holds, figures enter. They read, sit, and move mostly through domestic routines. Yet they rarely acknowledge one another across planes.
Comparisons inevitably surface. M. C. Escher is the most frequent reference, given the spatial shifts. Some observers note the quiet interior light reminiscent of Johannes Vermeer, or the emotional distance associated with Edward Hopper. These are useful points of comparison, but they do no more than situate her work. Ultimately, Vidal’s paintings are best understood as a contemporary exploration of coexistence — architecturally rigorous, emotionally restrained, and unmistakably her own.
Most of Vidal’s paintings are executed in acrylic on wooden panels, though she has increasingly worked in oil, allowing subtler tonal variations to emerge. She also produces works on paper in coloured pencil, a medium she has used in exhibitions that demonstrate her compositional range and sensitivity to detail.
Her exploration of space has extended beyond the panel. Vidal’s murals appear on public buildings in several countries, among them a large‑scale commission for the Honolulu Museum of Art as part of POW! WOW! Hawai‘i, and a mural for Facebook’s Northern California headquarters. The move into street painting came through a fellow Catalan artist, Uriginal, who encouraged her to take her work outside.
Recognition within both gallery and urban art contexts has consolidated her position as a distinctive Spanish contemporary painter working with architectural space. Her work has been exhibited internationally and forms part of private collections. In 2018 she received the Gràffica Award, a respected Spanish accolade in graphic design and visual communication. She is represented by Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles, where her fourth solo exhibition, Inward (November–December 2025), brought together fourteen new works on canvas and six on paper — accompanied by a complementary mural painted in Marina del Rey during the lead-up to the show. Other recent solo exhibitions include Melt at Galerie Zink in Germany, Concrete at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, California, and Urban at Beinart Gallery in Melbourne.
In conversation with The Exclusivist, Vidal describes a process guided by both construction and intuition. She reflects on her working methods, perfectionism, and the evolution of her practice.
Q&A With Cinta Vidal
Origins & Perspective
Drawing has been a constant for you since childhood. When did the multi-perspective, gravity-defying compositions first emerge — and was it a gradual evolution or something that arrived all at once?
Drawing has always been part of my life. Since I was a child in Barcelona, I was drawing all the time. Later I studied at Escola Massana, and there I started to understand space in a deeper way. I also worked some years painting scenery for theatre, and this influenced me a lot, because in theatre you build spaces that people enter physically.
The multi-perspective and gravity-defying compositions did not appear suddenly. It was a gradual evolution. At the beginning I was mainly interested in architecture and how people exist inside spaces. With time, I started to feel that one single point of view was not enough to explain reality. We can share the same physical place but experience it in completely different ways. Breaking perspective became a natural way to speak about this idea.
So the interest in space was always there, but the conceptual meaning developed slowly.
Den © Cinta Vidal
Composition & Emergence
Could you walk us through how a painting typically comes together — from first sketch to finished composition?
I usually begin with sketches. They are important to define the structure and the perspectives. When you work with different orientations and gravities, you need a strong construction; otherwise the painting does not hold together.
But the sketch is not something close. It works more like a guide. During the painting process, things can change. A figure can move; details can appear or disappear. There is space for intuition.
Normally I construct the architecture first. I think about walls, stairs, floors… Each one with its own orientation. Once this structure feels solid, I will introduce the figures. I try to balance fragmentation and unity. Even if everything seems separated, there must be harmony in the composition.
Brerhen © Cinta Vidal
Architecture as Structural Anchor
Your work often places figures within a shared architectural frame — sitting, reading, moving — yet each occupies a different orientation, seemingly unaware of the others. How do you determine which architectural elements — a staircase, a sofa, a doorway — act as the structural anchors that hold these separate realities together?
Architecture is essential in my work. It is what keeps everything connected. I choose elements like stairs, doors, or sofas because they are strong visually, but also because they have symbolic meaning. A staircase can suggest movement or transition. A doorway can speak about separation or possibility.
These elements help organise the different perspectives and give logic to the space. Without them, the composition would feel chaotic. The architecture makes the impossible believable.
I am interested in how people can share the same structure but still live in very separate realities. It reflects how we coexist in cities today.
Inn Cinta © Cinta Vidal
Perfection & Process
You’ve described yourself as a perfectionist and spoken about struggling with the feeling that a piece is never truly finished. Has this ever driven you to start a piece over entirely? And what does letting go look like for you in practice?
Yes, I am quite perfectionist. It is something I have had to manage. When a painting leaves the studio, I try not to analyse it too much, but sometimes I still see things I would change. I think this is natural; it is part of learning.
There have been moments when I repainted large sections or even started again from zero. Oil painting allows corrections, but it also demands patience and acceptance.
Letting go is usually not dramatic. Sometimes a deadline helps, but many times it is more intuitive. I step away from the painting and come back later. If I feel that continuing to work only makes it heavier and not clearer, then I know it is finished. It is about understanding when to stop adding.
Condominium © Cinta Vidal
Pauses and Momentum
Painting has been part of your life since childhood. When you do step away from it, whether after a project or by circumstance, how long before the pull returns?
Painting is very connected to who I am, so I never stay away for long. Even if I am not actively painting, I am thinking about ideas, observing spaces, or drawing small sketches.
If I stop for too long, I feel something is missing. But breaks can also be positive. When I return after some distance, I often see the work more clearly. The pause can sharpen the ideas and give new energy.
Flat © Cinta Vidal
Future Directions
Looking ahead, are there new mediums, materials, or techniques you’re curious to explore — anything that might push your work into unexpected territory?
I am interested in continuing to explore scale, especially in relation to public space. Murals allow a direct dialogue with real architecture, and this is very meaningful for me.
I am also open to experimenting with different surfaces or subtle material changes but always keeping the central idea of perspective and coexistence. I don’t feel the need to change completely, but I like the idea of expanding slowly.
Aversa © Cinta Vidal
Collecting & Personal Values
Do you find yourself drawn to collecting — whether art, design pieces, books, or other items? If so, what qualities or ideas make something compelling enough to add to your collection, and is there one that stands out in terms of design, craftsmanship, or concept?
I collect many books, especially about architecture and cities. I am drawn to objects that are well made and have strong ideas behind them. I love Brutalism architecture and I have several books about it.
When something stays in my mind for a long time, then I know it is important. It does not need to be spectacular. I prefer works that slowly change your perception.
For me, collecting is not about owning many things. It is about living with them and allowing a quiet conversation to continue over time.
Townhouse © Cinta Vidal
Final Thoughts
From intimate wooden panels to expansive public façades, Cinta Vidal has built a practice grounded in structure. The shifting orientations may initially draw the eye, yet it is the discipline beneath them that sustains attention. Architecture is not backdrop in her work; it is framework, argument, and anchor. Each plane is built to hold its own logic before the figures ever enter.
Vidal’s interiors reflect something familiar: proximity without alignment, presence without shared perspective. The quieter the composition, the sharper that observation becomes. The tension is contained within carefully measured space — and that, ultimately, is what makes her work worth returning to.
To those encountering Vidal’s paintings for the first time, her preference for calling herself an artisan rather than an artist may feel unexpected. Yet the choice aligns with her training in a traditional atelier and the careful, plane-by-plane construction that characterises her work. In the end, Vidal’s body of work speaks for itself — and louder than any title ever could.
Cinta Vidal’s Selected Earlier Works
Cintia Vidal Official Website | Instagram
Photo credits (right-hand side, top to bottom): Attic, Sofascape, Side by side, Napoli, Siblings, Sofascape 2, Dishes—all © Cinta Vidal.
