In Pastel Reverie, artist Chei Cruz explores a delicate dreamscape where innocence lingers and stillness hums beneath the surface. Her works, rendered in a restrained palette of subdued pastels, create a quiet yet uncanny atmosphere, one that evokes a sense of suspended reality. Figures of young girls appear amid surreal gardens, where time slows and logic gently unravels. These imagined sanctuaries blur the threshold between waking and wonder.
Each piece functions as a portal into a contemplative world where the boundaries between nature and imagination dissolve. Her subjects, partaking in whimsical rituals, seem caught in a moment of introspective drift. Although the imagery is fantastical, it derives its power from restraint, from the subtle dissonance between the familiar and the otherworldly.
There is an underlying tenderness in Cruz's compositions, a hushed poetry that permeates the gentle forms, the softened colors, and the unspoken thoughts of her characters. In this realm, emotion is conveyed not through overt expression but through quiet presence. The garden, both setting and metaphor, becomes a space of reverie, sheltering delicate thoughts, transient memories, and elusive dreams.
Pastel Reverie is a meditation on liminality between child and muse, fantasy and reality, silence and sound. Through the artist's muted visual language and surreal lyricism, Cruz crafts a world that feels at once personal and untethered, where wonder exists in soft focus and stillness speaks volumes.

Write-up by Deseree Mapandi