About the paintings

     I came to Miami in 1997. Compared to Madrid, the air of artistic freedom I felt was very liberating. I started doing portraits of my friends. I've always found that copying human faces and capturing the image of a person has something to do with magic.

     But I soon grew tired of this and slowly started finding my own voice. Since I'm able to plug into the human subconscious I'm never short of inspiration. What I like best is giving body to an idea through the language of symbols.

     My work was recently compared by two persons - whose opinion I trust - to that of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. This came as a surprise to me because I was never interested in those two artists until they were mentioned to me, my knowledge of their body of work was absolutely superficial until now.They were adscribed to the surrealist movement and they ended up living in Mexico because of WWII. 

     I believe the surrealist use of symbols is pretty random, whereas every symbol I use in a painting is exactly where it needs to be, it is a clear illustration of what I want to convey. Every image I use has one or more meanings, and every painting has more than one reading. It is for the viewer to extract all the information he is able to get.

     What compels me to produce my work? On one hand I am manic- compulsive, and on the other I am looking for self-expression. Whenever I see something that fascinates me - be it a Mexican ruin or an addiction enslaving valuable people- I try to understand it, to dissect it, to digest it and -finally- to fuse it into a piece of canvas. I am a voyeur, but one that gets involved with its subjects.

    I feel very attracted by interesting textures such as wrapping paper, burlap, coarse linen or exotic prints to paint upon. Oil is my favorite because of its versatility and it's richness, but pastel allows me more freedom of expression. I am still experimenting with media and I probably always will.

People frequently ask me questions about my work. I am going to try and explain each painting and its "petite histoire."

Squid series:

Giant Squid: I had a nightmare in which I was taking a stroll in Villalba, an un-interesting, dry, full of stones neighborhood in the Madrid suburban area. Suddenly, a fisherman's truck appeared and dumped a pile of rubbish in an empty lot close to where I was. To my greatest surprise, these guys had also dumped a giant squid that came back to life and started pursuing me!

Colossal squid: Shortly after painting  "giant squid", I was able to go to London and visit the giant squid specimen in show at the Natural History Museum. It was really impressive! I realized my first version didn't convey the enormity of the creature, so I attempted a second one.

Chinese Calamari: A friend told me that in Chinese "squid " is pronounced " you-yu". Ideograms on the right are in Chinese from Taiwan, those on the left are written in modern Mandarin.

Hermit Crab: Last year I met a very sensitive and lonely person who likes to stay at home. I tried to make a parallelism between his apartment and the Nautilus shell, again playing with transparencies. The stars symbolize the people out there that he could meet, were he to get out of his shell.

Happy mermaid: This is a squid mermaid that floats, peaceful and relaxed, though she is not sitting in a very soft background. It depicts a happy phase in my life.
 
Purposeful mermaid: This is a squid mermaid that swims swiftly looking like an arrow going right on target.

Dancing squid: This is a dancer whose skirt looks like the tentacles of a squid, and whose arms and intense face are those of a flamenco bailaora.

Avida Calamari: This is the conclusion of the series, a woman voraciously eating tiny squid, because the first painting depicted a giant squid eating a tiny woman.

Other concepts:

Eva and Evo: In past times, every artist that respected himself had his own version of "Adam and Eve". Following this tradition, I gave it a try and came up with this couple from a rear view. I decided to use this very exotic (for me!) print as a background because it gave me a feeling of primitivism. The transparency effect is "voulu."
The name: I was shocked by Bolivian president Evo Morales' name, and his mother's audacity at using one that had no masculine form,until now.

Reversible Evos: A friend painter, Nereida Garcia - Ferraz, gave me the idea of doing a reversible version of " Eva and Evo", which I did. In this one I was able to play more with transparencies and came out with a somewhat ghostly effect.
Each couple is to be hung in the same wall, maybe with a door or a piece of furniture in between. Ideally, I wish the two couples could be hung in the same room, facing each other.

She- wolf, Bacardi version: This is the oil version of a pastel on wrapping paper she- wolf (Tequila version!) I sold in Guadalajara, Mexico. Both versions intended to convey how silly people become when they indulge in frequent drinking. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful at this; people thought this was a very funny painting.

Poisonous Wolf: This was a third attempt at a more dramatic expression of the same idea: "Alcohol is a bad mother that turns into idiots those who suck from her." This could be used as a logo for Alcoholic Anonymous or for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. During my life I've had the occasion to meet very charming and / or talented people whom I've seen wasting their potential thanks to a party life-style in which alcohol was a must.

The Prophetess:This painting is an invocation in favor of Islamic Womankind. I believe middle eastern countries are in need of their own version of the Mexican Lady of Guadalupe. Here, I am visualizing a strong woman which could be called Our Lady of Samarra, bringing the power of Love and Light to her desertic land. She appears clad in an XVIIIth century ottoman outfit, on top of a minaret, acting as a bridge between Heaven and Earth. The light of the heart she holds in her left hand is dissipating the veil that half covers her face, revealing the radiant smile of Truth.

  It is interesting to go back in history to reflect on the terrible persecution that women have endured. In the Letters of Helena Roerich Volume Two, she reveals that the battle between Lucifer and the Great Brothers had much to do with the degradation of women. "Remarkable is the fact that in order to achieve his [Lucifer's] goal of becoming the full and only ruler of Earth, his chief efforts were directed toward the humiliation of women. He knew that with the demeaning of women, the coarsening and degeneration of humanity was unavoidable."

Meso- American Series:

Tzompantli: I was impressed by the variety of these stone sculptures of skulls at the Templo mayor museum in Mexico city. Since at the time I was also very impressed by Keanu Reeves in "The matrix" I decided to hang him with the others, as his face with those dark glasses looked like a skull, too. It seems that Mexican priests used to pierce the skulls of the people they sacrificed into a stake to hang them in horizontal rows.

Pre- Columbian man- eater: Originally, it was intended as some kind of voodoo against my husband's Mexican lovers, whom I generically call "Lupitas". Later, I realized she looks surprisingly similar to a friend I met in Oaxaca. Now I feel I can't part with her.

Who ate Keanu? I didn't, Spaniards did! : This one originates from the misperception Latin American people have that all their evils come from the Spaniards. A gold idol, featured as a high priest in a would-be Mayan tower, blames the above invaders while blood leaks out of his mouth.
Here I did a lot of research. The skulls on the floor are from an archaeological magazine and are perfect examples of the Mayan custom of binding their baby's heads to cause deformity.

Mayan Mummy: This one is an attempt to play around with a reproduction I did of a Mayan mask, and to give it a body. It's someone that doesn't look very dead, but is, in fact, dead.