Islington art organisation Light Eye Mind will display the works of young Spanish artist Ana Pallares.

The exhibit, including a collection of her personal interpretation of classic paintings, will run from September 8-29.

Pallares’ approach to art takes into account the blessing and the curse of having to deal with famous, inspirational painters.

She says: “As a young artist just at the beginning of her career, all I can say to old and not-so-old masters is: ‘Thank you so much, it’s great to follow your steps, understand the reasons behind your movements and decipher the clues you’ve left in order to arrive at different conclusions from yours’.”

“‘Past Remains’ is about [what] old, or in some cases more contemporary works, look like through the eyes of a young artist with a lot of doubts but also with some certainties, like there’s no possible present nor future without the weight of past,” Pallares says of the exhibition.

“When I am sad or I feel a bit de-motivated, it’s my own trick to appeal to the painters who came before me. I look for hope in their art, and hopefully, I find it. If I am feeling lost, it’s very useful for me to see how my idols, let’s call them totems, got lost and then got found.”

Pallares, who described her honest and emotional work as “ironic, expressive and obsessive”, fled Barcelona, her hometown, and the constraints imposed by a formal art education.

“When I was younger, I read somewhere ‘without tradition there’s no innovation’,” she says. “I was avid for information, all I wanted to do was to learn and to absorb.”

Her biggest challenge as an artist is to find new meanings for pain and death.

“I hope to present them in a healthier, manageable way. My aim is turning my destructive feelings into constructive action.”

That is why she chooses to paint the deformed faces of her paintings with rainbow colours.

“People feel lost while watching them, whereas I feel that I could not have expressed the tragicomedy of life in a better way,” she says.

Light Eye Mind, 176 Blackstock Road, N5 1HA.

lighteyemind.com