Pumas

‘Pumas’ is an intimate portrait of two Andean pumas rendered in Copic marker and felt-tip pen on rare handmade Peruvian paper created from alpaca wool and mountain grasses. I collected this paper while travelling through Peru, where the puma is honoured as the guardian of Kay Pacha — the Middle World — the realm of human consciousness.

The absorbent, fibrous paper creates a soft, tactile ground that allows the ink to settle in organic, unpredictable ways. Both pumas gaze outward with soulful presence, their faces shaped by rhythmic linework and gentle tonal shifts that evoke watchfulness, tenderness, and inner intelligence.

Framed within an archival mat, this small original carries the quiet strength of the puma — a creature who walks between worlds with grace, grounding, and embodied awareness.

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BEYOND THE SEE

I paint images that sit somewhere between realism and dreams. I’m influenced by memory, mythology and the magical realist tradition.

Early in my career, I worked as a newspaper photographer and journalist. I inherited from that experience a tendency to crop in hard and look for strong, immediate compositions.

Long periods of travel and immersion in other cultures, particularly in Latin America, opened up for me different ways of experiencing and understanding reality.

The work of Henri Rousseau and Frida Kahlo is among my influences. What draws me to their work is a way of seeing and feeling beyond the surface — allowing imagination, feeling, symbolism and sensuality to coexist with the observed world.

Follow me on Instagram @ShereeGlasson, where I post regular updates on my work.