What is your art practice about?
I create gestural abstract compositions using bold and bright colours with the aim to present day-to-day situations from a playful perspective.
Take us inside your studio.
In early 2021, I moved my studio to the epicentre of the industrial area in the Northern Beaches of Sydney. I am surrounded by graffiti walls, the buzzing of construction trucks, the smell of recently brewed coffee and the coordinated chant of the jujutsu gym in the opposite side of the street. This cacophony of stimuli has had a huge impact in my art practice.
Did you study fine arts or are you self-taught?
I am a self-taught artist, but I have been dedicated to the creation of pictures for many years in the medical imaging field. An important proportion of the initial imagery in my work takes off from echo patterns and layers in the ultrasound monitor. In that dark room, the back-and-forth question and answer process that takes place in identifying structures and organs, mirrors the way in which a painting is executed; and vice versa.
What does a typical day in the studio involve?
I usually go out for a quick walk before I hit my studio. This helps me set my head in the right space, prepare my body for long hours of standing and allows me to buy a very soothing cup of coffee. Once I hit the studio, I dress up, in almost a ceremonial way that marks the start of the day. On a good day, hours fly! On a bad day, when things are just not quite happening as planned, I prefer to stop painting and instead read or do some research.
What is your subject matter?
Everything that I am comes through my art. I am a mother, an immigrant, a wife, a doctor, a teacher, a friend, a Latin-American, and all these facets of my life will surface one way or another in the work. I can be inspired by a language dilemma, a song, a patient’s story, a memory from home. I am interested in the effects that colour has when representing all these scenarios, and by how it is interpreted by the brain.
What materials do you use and why?
I got introduced to art at the pottery wheel and have also experimented with metal sculptures but most of my practice revolves around painting. I am drawn to experimentation and occasionally you can find other props incorporated into the painting such as paper, cloth, thread, gauze, pom-poms and even aluminium.
What have you been working on recently?
I will be participating at The Other Art Fair in December this year. I am working towards a solo exhibition in 2023 – 2024 and getting ready for an overseas artist in residency as well.
