An expressive need, born in the artist from the desire to find a way to make her pictorial subjects more material, led her to search for an original material from Mother Earth. The inspiration provided by nature spontaneously led her to work with this element. The artist described the process as so:

“It is one of the most surprising and extraordinary resources that nature offers us (it is elastic, waterproof, and recyclable). This is not the most prized part, but rather the part with an extremely hard and irregular structure, “virgin cork” or “first cork,” which is produced from the first harvest of the plant after at least twenty-five years when the bark is removed by hand.”

Her artistic research therefore came across this raw material that cannot be used to make corks. As a less valuable material it would normally be destined to be ground down and transformed into granules for environmentally-friendly building and insulation. In doing so, wonderful pieces of rough and knotty bark, preferably covered with plant life, become treasure chests of a world rich in poetry and history, and become inspiring muses in the eyes of the painter. Silvia Canton continues:

“Slicing through this strange material full of lived experience, I let the randomness of the cut give me dozens of pieces from which to choose “the right piece”… that unique piece, that incomparable JEWEL to which I give new dignity, life, and shape. The irregular cuts are woven together, sometimes thick, rough, and harsh, sometimes light, sinuous, and pierced like delicate lace. This gives them a new appearance which turns them into a WORK OF ART.”

A vision that almost personifies cork and makes it a valuable source of inspiration again, in keeping with centuries-old knowledge.