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North Terminal, Concourse D
Gate D31 Gallery
Post-Security
Donna Torres
The Radiance of Proximity
October 18 - March 3, 2024
Donna Torres is a Miami-based artist whose work reflects her interest in travel, research, conservation, and the natural world. The legends and traditions of plant use through time fascinate the artist, who, for the past 50 years, has traveled extensively exploring, observing, and documenting plants used in healing the body and the mind and their cultural interconnectedness to the people and communities past and present that have used them.
The Radiance of Proximity features colorful, multilayered oil paintings and meticulously detailed graphite drawings. The artworks produced from 2004 to the present are influenced by her journeys and experiences with different plants, places, and cultures. It also references and honors important early female plant explorers and healers who, like the artist, were moved by the power and beauty of plants, such as German naturalist and scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 – 1717) and Mazatec sacred ritual healer María Sabina (1894 – 1985).
We hope this collection of intriguing works, teeming with symbolism and sentiment, inspires viewers to observe intently and delight in unfamiliar and recognizable environments while appreciating the extraordinary and imaginative ways the artist captures the natural world around us.
Artist Profile: Donna Torres
About the Artist
Donna Torres is a Canadian-born artist, botanical illustrator, and textile designer. Working primarily in paintings and drawings, Torres's work centers on the relationship of people, plants, and culture. Torres received her BFA in Painting and an MFA in Painting and Drawing at Florida International University. She recently retired as an adjunct professor at Florida International University and from teaching botanical illustration at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden's Education Department in Miami, Florida. She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions locally, nationally, and internationally. Recent group shows include Chamanismo, Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile (2022), Ecopharma, La Pared Arte Contemporáneo in Pereira, Colombia (2022), and her most recent solo exhibition Caminos y Enlaces was held at Sala Gasco Arte Contemporáneo, in Santiago, Chile (2023). She was a recipient of an American Society of Botanical Artists grant to teach botanical illustration to the Indigenous Peoples of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, in 2004 and was awarded the Corral & Cathers Artist Fund at the Coral Gables Community Foundation in 2023. Her paintings and drawings are included in public and private collections, and her botanical artworks have been published in numerous books. Torres lives and works in Miami, Florida.
