María Gómez takes the human figure as the main subject of her work. Her figures are solitary and classical in style, and she depicts them as mysterious and melancholy beings in bare spaces.

Her work is often autobiographical. Her enigmatic, quiet, solitary, richly symbolic pictures are perhaps reminiscent of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964). The use of warm, soft colours with hazy outlines influenced the discreetly expressive delicacy of her works. Light is crucial to achieving that dreamy ideal atmosphere. Even if the scene is an interior, the working method is always the same: whether by day or night, there are no half measures in the lighting level; there is no twilight in her compositions.

In this work a woman is presented as a solitary, pensive figure, engrossed in her reading and oblivious of what is happening around her. María Gómez’s passion for literature is reflected in the presence of books in many of her compositions, perhaps because ever since she was a child she has spent her life surrounded by books, as her father was a bookbinder by profession.

The picture almost looks like a sketch, as if it were unfinished. The strokes are spontaneous and not quite complete. This enables her to create an impression of movement in the woman’s hands, which seem to be turning the pages of the book in which she is absorbed. The figure is confined to an austere, timeless space, in which she barely fits. Everything is too small for her. Gómez plays with a dual dimension in this work; she creates one picture inside another, limiting the available space more and more.