About
Adriana Silva grew up in Puerto Rico surrounded by mountains, beaches, and the sea, and that world never really left her. Water has always been at the heart of her paintings, not just as something to look at, but as a way of talking about emotion, memory, and what lives beneath the surface.
She's a self-taught painter and scuba diver who works intuitively, letting color, movement, and rhythm lead the way. Her early work dives into dreamlike underwater worlds; coral gardens, petal-shaped sailboats, horizons that feel like half-remembered dreams. She paints with acrylics, using bold brushstrokes and vibrant color to capture how the ocean feels, not just how it looks.
Her newer series, Inner Landscapes, takes that same curiosity inward. Human figures become like coral reefs; layered, interconnected, shaped by everything they've lived through. Flowers, color, and symbolic imagery extend from each figure, suggesting that who we are is always growing and always connected to something larger.
She creates art because it brings her joy and gives her a quiet place inside herself when life gets too loud.
Now based in Arlington, Virginia, Adriana shows work in group exhibitions across Puerto Rico, New York, Miami, California, and Washington, D.C. She is an artist in residence at Palette 22 in The Village at Shirlington, where she paints live regularly, and also creates commissioned work for private collectors.
Artist Statement
I work in acrylics, painting human figures and the inner landscapes that shape who we are.
I am drawn to what lives beneath the surface; the emotions, memories, and experiences that quietly define us but rarely get seen. In my current series, Inner Landscapes, human figures become like coral reefs: layered, complex ecosystems built slowly over time by everything that has ever touched them. Flowers and color grow out from each figure as extensions of an inner life; a grief that bloomed into something, a memory that never fully left, a moment that changed everything. Time is always present in my work. Not as a clock but as accumulation; the way a person carries their whole history in their body without anyone else knowing it.
I work intuitively, following color, movement, and rhythm without a fixed plan. I am influenced by Symbolist art and the idea that certain elements can say what words cannot. Growing up on the coast of Puerto Rico, surrounded by the sea, mountains, and tropical light, shaped how I see space, flow, and form. That world is still in every painting I make.