Briefly describe the work you do.
Figurative art is my passion, along with the Italian classical artwork and the human figure with its perfect design and functionality that dazzles us with its beauty. My work consists on several phases in which generates creation through imagination, organizing my ideas using photographs taken along the process, this photographs captured the essence of objects through the lens and my soul. Translating the flow of ideas into a composition that creates meanings to the observer
My artwork uses oil paintings and handcrafted linen canvass. My goal is to always be looking to get near my roots and leaving a piece of my essence in each artwork, but never interfering with the creative process, where anything is possible.
Currently I am playing between two cultures, Mexican handcrafts and Italian Madonnas, creating a juxtaposition, which has been very educational for me.
Tell us about your background and how that has had an influence on your work and on you as an artist.
My studies in Florence, grew a fascination with the human figure, after coming back to Mexico, went to live in Monterrey and worked as a trainee apprentice for a Mexican Sculptor Jorge Elizondo.
My everyday experiences in this complex world made me believe that today everything is considered art. Before this, in the past, artists broke ties with the academy due to rebellion and social restraint.
Today, fast globalization brought art to the masses, which is good, but art has become fast food with no quality, as Andy Warhol predicted. I feel we need to slow down, take a breath and return to create things with innovation and value.
Art has value when is backed by a human feeling.
The concept of the artist studio has a broad range of meanings in contemporary practice. Artists may spend much of their time in the actual studio, or they may spend very little time in it. Tell us about your individual studio practice and how it differs from or is the same as traditional notions of “being in the studio.”
My studio is at home, a space full of pictures, photographs, drawings and handcrafts in which reality escapes the routine of every day, this place embodies me with a language that translates in a direct communication with art, roots and my work, combined with playfulness.
For me art is like meditation, in which while creating you become aware of everything, and nothing, a process of introspective into oneself and exploiting our most deepest and beautiful being in the form of art.
This way is my way of achieving that the observer feels the art piece with all the physical senses and its soul.
And while working in my Studio I remember Pablo Picasso’s phrase: “Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”
What roles do you find yourself playing that you may not have envisioned yourself in when you first started making art?
When I started I was clueless, no idea of the meaning or the process of creating art, though my mind was like an empty canvass. I enjoy the process of discovering and rediscovering the evolution that my art is going on through time, and how it comes to life representing each of my phases and personal experiences.
When do you find is the best time to make art? Do you set aside a specific time everyday or do you have to work whenever time allows?
My life is also in constant transformation, before I had a daughter I usually kept a tight schedule as in other occupancy. With the light that has brought my daughter, now I make time to make art. Always focusing with constant lectures that keeps my mind discovering unknown territories and keeps putting gas on the creation engine.
How has your work changed in the past five years? How is it the same?
Still doing figurative, still am fascinated by the human body, I have introduced objects to interpret the things that run through my imagination. As time has gone by I have achieved to get more vivid colours, which I feel liberated after taking that step. My passion takes me to put all my heart in every art piece.
How have people such as family, friends, writers, philosophers, other artists or even pop icons had an impact on the work you do?
History of art has had a great impact on my growth as an artist, it made me love, understand the relationship between and art piece, its creator and their context. Books have been a great inspiration for me, specially philosophers and artists biographies. In that same way I feel like every person in my life, specially family has made me what I am.
Have you ever been pulled in the direction of a pursuit other than being an artist? What are your other interests?
For a short period of my life I worked as a trainee for Jorge Elizondo learning sculpture, it was a life changing experience, it made me learn and love to create art. My daughter has pulled me momentanously in the role of being a mom, which I love, she is a great inspiration and an everyday testimony of spontaneity and joyfulness.
About
Went to Florence, Italy, and study Fine Arts for three years, there I fell in love for antique techniques, the great classics and the human figure.
What amazes me and moves my current art pieces, is the need of human beings to believe in something, trying to find the origin, this need is coded on our primary roots of our soul, on what moves the human being.
My art shuffles between the different religions or systems of beliefs, their icons, totems, traditions and different ways of worship or pray.
While thoroughly respecting every faith and religion in a unique way, my art seeks the colloquial objects that through history turn themselves into subjects of worship, seeking to convey the rhythm in which cycles of life evolve changing the colors of those credos, although the foundation of those roots remain unchanged and their beliefs change constantly its color, gaining life through humans. My interest is in exploring how humans faith, while blind can easily turn into superstition through dogmas and intolerance, due to fear and uncertainty.
Actually I am representing the energy of Mexican handcrafts and traditions, great example of how objects created originally with beauty and greatness for a purpose and then lose their sense through time and human usage.
All images copyright of the artist and used with their permission.