About my work












 

I studied Graphic Design in Chile in the 80s, married young, had two sons, Mateo and Joaquin. Soon after I followed their father to live in California. We had a small business selling custom design wrought iron furniture and hardware in San Francisco. After some back and forth between Chile and the US we settled in Boston, MA. The family business was not doing so well so I looked for jobs and entered the world of the translation industry. Not as a translator, but as a project manager. In Boston I learned how to be a good admin worker, they were really formative years for me. And a bit wacky too, since we actively participated in a spiritual cult, with guru and all.
After 9/11 the visa was revoked and we had to move out. We were not keen to go back to Chile since, as we all know now, chileans were still under some kind of dream, and did not feel like a free society yet. They had just started the long transition into dismantling the dictator's legacy.

Mexico seemed like a good option, since the wrought iron business was by then based in Aguascalientes. My US raised teenage sons were told that we would go back to the US, even though it was really not possible. We never wanted them to be illegal citizens even though maybe Joaquin would have liked to stay as such. There is a lot of grief as a family for that uprooting. much more than when we left Chile. Teenage years are really the times when we fix our identities. or the first time we try doing so, I guess. 

In 2003 we moved to Mexico City and after a deep cultural shock we settled for a life here, with jobs and schools. But my sons did not adapt well and Mateo decided to go to study to Toronto. Then followed Joaquin and I broke. And I fell in love with Mexico at the same time. I guess Mexico became my family. Empty nest equalled empty heart and I had found a desire to start painting after so many years of postponing it. I felt a call, I felt like it was OK to desire to be a painter. i wouldn't say artist at that time, but I was feeling the healing that would bring to my life. So I bought paints and an easel and a few days after my younger son left I moved to his room and started thinking what i wanted to do with my life. I owed a lot to my long time companion and father of my beautiful sons. and I divorced him cause we had a different idea of what to do next. 
I really wanted to paint but after so many years of being a mother and an admin worker to pay the bills I needed to start from scratch. Reboot. Buy myself a second chance. I had saved so much money once the kids and the husband left my life and I got some more money after my Dad died. So, I started going to painting classes at the extensions program in la Academia San Carlos in the heart of Mexico City. That colonial old building where all the big masters had gone. 

I re-discover my nerd bone and thought the academic world would be perfect for me. My last job as a project manager was in Polanco and I was fired for not speaking nice to the boss. I was fully ready to never go back to work in an office.  When I gained some confidence I applied for a Masters degree in Arts. It was 2013 and I was 40.
In the interim I became a Mexican citizen and all throughout this process I lived with my current partner, Q, a writer of fantasy short stories and a mathematician. 
After spending all my savings plus the scholarship in those "initial" years, I found myself again, looking for a job. And it was impossible to do so, with no connections. But, it was not hard to find a job teaching English. And so I learned to be a teacher-over-the-phone, working at home. And since that worked just fine for having time to paint but just enough for paying the bills, I got another job as a rater for Google, probably because of my past experience in the industry. So, it did not went as smooth but by 2017 I had two home-office part-time jobs and I was painting and showing my work in local street fairs. But Mexico City was so polluted and my partner was very sick, not able to go out much. I was starting to hate the city just about that time. I could not see any landscape, so much smog, horrible smells, and friends that struggle so much to commute they have no time to meet enough for us to feel we belong. we really don't belong anywhere, but hey, there is always the promise of paradise somewhere else. Being my partner from Oaxaca, the place to move and continue our lives together came easily. 
I live in Oaxaca since mother's day in 2017. One year after my granddaughter was born I decided to move even farther away (no direct flight between here and my family) I was going to be an absent grandmother. Pretty much like an american mom, I guess, only seeing my sons once a year or less. But it was worth it.

Moving to Oaxaca has been the best move I have ever done in my life. I found a community of artists that supported me and welcomed me. I have sold my work in the street fair and in galleries, and best of all, I was able to give my first painting course in a well known art school. I made friends and I built a carrizo workshop in the roof of my house, with a fantastic view of the Sierra. Not fancy and sometimes it gets wet with the rain, but just what I need to paint with oils which I prefer but are a total mess when it comes to cleaning. Anyway. I have no complains, never looked back to my life in Mexico City. 

The artwork that I do comes from two places, the supposedly unconscious part of my mind and the rational and controlling side of it. So, in the mix there are cultural and personal memories, mostly energy and feelings, desires and opinions; the second place I inhabit when painting is the rational and critical mind that wants to direct the image towards an open question about the place of women in society. Notions of identity based on place of birth, migration, roles and relationships are explored in the images that I found in abstract and decorative backgrounds. I am influenced by academic techniques and illustrative drawings from classical to modern artists. I am inspired by concepts of the fantastic as it is studied in literature, where it is understood as a structure for presenting and confronting paradigms of beliefs. I have spent some time working on digital illustrations and I don't see those two things as separate in the making as much as they are in the trying to make a living out of them. 

Living in Oaxaca influences me in so many ways: nature is ever present, strong in amazing animals and botanical species, as well as weather wise, with periods of intense dryness followed but some very rainy seasons. or not. one can never know. Culturally diverse in local languages, food, music and clothes, but also strongly localists, fiercely traditional and preindustrial, guardians of a way of life deeply rooted in the forms. Being exposed to such richness makes me a better person, gives me the love and awe I need to put so many hours in the canvas to create something close to beautiful if possible, something that can resonate at a psychic level. Also so rich in crafts, the idea of the separation between crafts and art becomes politically incorrect here, really. Very much so as it was at some point in England. I am a designer after all, and I was trained to see all creative process as equal, no matter what material, what image or thing you want to create, the thinking of it, the process is what drives me. 

I must mention my parents. They were both dentists. People that worked with their hands doing amazingly customized and beautiful little sculptures. in the line of jewelers and beauty experts. dedicated to the health of others, bourgeois but also hippies at heart they gave me a privileged education. They taught me to value what's handmade and to feel fulfilled with the contemplation of nature. They were avid readers, and the house had art, crafts and many many books, encyclopedias, anatomy and history books. novels and atlases. They were a handsome smart couple and I owe everything to them and the vision they had of me as an independent woman. 

I don't expect you to understand my work just as I created, all those metaphors that work only for me... but rather would like you to feel free to try your own interpretations using your own creativity in the process of discovering meaning. Having said that, I have to add that this work is also the record of what a woman can do as alternative to following the traditional role of family pilar. It gives me constant joy and peace, it is essential to my mental well being. yes, art is therapy. and so much more once it connects to other woman's life.