Inés Szamrey was born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1971. She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1994. Since graduation she has worked as an artist, a graphic designer and illustrator. Buenos Aires and Córdoba were the two first cities where she set up her studio. Very early her work started to deal with paintings that stood at the threshold of representation and abstraction.
In 2001, Inés moved to the United States, first to Columbus, Ohio, and later to New York where she started to develop her technique that combines her own painted papers, painting and collage. She currently lives and works in London.
Her paintings are in private collections in the UK, USA, Canada, Uruguay, Argentina, México, Barbados and Turkey.

I paint to produce a visual effect. I focus my work on the plastic qualities that allow me to tailor an image that is capable of producing an emotional reaction over an intellectual one.
My technique of collage overlaps different media: chalk, crayon, hand cut painted paper and patterned wrapping paper, over thin and thick layers of acrylic paint applied on canvas.
My take on painting focuses mainly on early sketch work, gestural abstraction and an intense use of saturation of colour. I find forms and landscapes in my paintings through repetition of an application and observation of colours and patterns. Intuition is a tool that suits my work and I operate in this milieu, speculating with doodles and collages that start as a very unconstructed mass and end in basic compositions.
Most of the pieces are generated by painterly accidents. They build into the work until it reaches a state of pictorial clarity before they become representational. It is this state, between representation and abstraction, that I constantly pursue as an image. I concentrate on achieving an image that is capable of triggering a true plastic emotion, detached from narrative and purely visual.