Ricardo Romero Cortez Duque

The Light That Stayed / Acrylic + Canvas / 48×48

This painting tells the story of a moment after impact—after something has been broken, said, or lost. The surface feels weathered, as if time itself has pressed its palms into the paint. Cool grays and muted blues dominate the left side, heavy with quiet and restraint, while the right burns with a field of ochre and gold, rough-edged and unapologetic.

Between them runs a jagged seam, touched with red, like a memory that refuses to be fully buried. It suggests conflict, rupture, or the cost of crossing from one state of being into another. Yet the gold does not overwhelm the gray; it simply insists on existing beside it.

The Light That Stayed is not about sudden redemption or clean resolutions. It is about endurance. It tells the story of someone standing in the aftermath, discovering that even when clarity feels distant, and the past still bleeds through, something warm remains—imperfect, scarred, but alive.