Mirela Fioresy is a visual artist whose work explores the invisible forces that shape how we see ourselves and each other. Through painting and mixed media she focuses on what brings us together and what keeps us apart, examining how our environments, beliefs, and emotions shape both personal experience and the wider collective consciousness.  

For her GlogauAIR residency, Fioresy introduces “Water and Oil Don’t Mix” as both the title and the guiding principle of her project. She takes a fundamental lesson from painting – that oil and acrylic will never blend – and transforms it into a method for discovery. By layering these materials on a single surface, she allows their resistance to guide the outcome, watching pigments push, repel, and settle into surprising organic forms. This encounter becomes both process and metaphor, capturing moments of tension, separation, and uneasy coexistence. 

Open Studio visitors will encounter a series of paintings alongside process videos produced during the residency. By witnessing these evolving surfaces and the boundaries they reveal, Fioresy invites reflection on the fragile truces we negotiate in life. Rather than  offering easy resolution, her work asks us to consider how we must continually learn to coexist, sharing the same space even when differences remain, and recognizing that navigating these divisions is part of our shared human experience.

In a second phase of the project, Fioresy uses a separatory funnel to mix water and oil in a vessel rather than directly on the canvas. She repeats the dripping process, allowing the liquids to separate and fall as controlled drips that form unexpected patterns and enrich the surface with texture. Through this approach, she explores the same interactions present in her layered paintings, now expressed through movement and the gradual build-up of marks guided by the funnel’s slow release.