The enjoyment of the creative act
Self-taught plastic
artist living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since 2012, she has published on line her
blog Espacio Farnelliano, an artist's journal in real time, where she
reviews the know-how of her work and details her attempts to position herself
in the international art market. Her blog aims to be a dynamic curriculum that
shows achievements and failures, the daily reality of those who dedicate their
life to art; and at the same time a useful reference for other artists who are
also trying to develop their career independently.
Do you remember your first dazzling, your first time needing to capture, pour yourself onto a surface?
I remember drawing from a very young age. They asked me what I was going to ask Santa Claus and Reyes Magos, or what I wanted for Children's Day or for my birthday, and I always answered the same thing: “papel y pinturitas”, colored pencils and notebooks where I was permanently scribbling something. Drawing has been an instinctive pleasure and my favorite game from then until today.
Did you study at any fine arts school?
No. When I got to adolescence I was drawing and painting full time and I had too many tricks. I tried to enter an academy and it lasted two weeks. I felt like they wanted to teach me what I had learned years ago. Maybe I should have tried in a workshop and not in an academic schematic structure, but then it didn't occur to me and I went on freely on my own. It was very natural for me to follow my training in a self-taught way.
How
would you define your style and what do you look for in painting?
I am a
figurative illustrator determined to paint, which ends up configuring something
half-hybrid delimited by the superposition of techniques and textures. My
style has, of course, a lot of play and experimentation. The trial and error of
the self-taught and the irresponsible fun of who is not waiting to meet
requirements to pass the subject with their work.
Inspiration, luck or talent?
Game. Pleasant
and peaceful game.
Why
create more?
Because it is inevitable. You are not
an artist by decision but by destiny. It is despite our good judgment advising
us to be something else.
Do you remember what was the first painting you sold?
Yes, at
an open-air fair in a square in the City of Buenos Aires, in 1993, around 12 at
night, a little while before dismantling the exhibition. The work was Trampa,
from the Masks series.
A mistake
only beginners make. A mistake even professionals make.
The same
error in my case: I lose artworks. I trust people who perhaps I shouldn't trust in
my interest in having my work spread, travel and exhibited. The work goes, but
many times it does not return. I console myself by thinking that it is not bad
will, that Buenos Aires is so far from everything, that courier services and
the post office are not infallible ... But above all I tell myself that each
work has its own destiny and that each one is where it should be, although I do
not know where that place is.
What is the
work that has impacted you the most or has been the most influential in your
life?
Many, all
self-taught, are formed with art books and visits to museums. There are many
artists that I admire: naturally Dalí, Rubens, Velazquez and Goya of the
classics, Lucien Freud of the contemporaries. And the greatest impact has been
seeing many of them together at El Prado Museum, an experience that I have had
twice and that I consider an essential experience for any artist.
Art is a symbolic language that counts from the creator's personal point of
view, marked by his time and his environment. Afterwards, each work determines
an individual experience with each viewer, and there, in that exclusive bond
and alien to the artist or creator, history is created.
Why did you
choose painting and not another artistic expression?
As a
draftswoman, aspiring to painting is almost a logical consequence. And in the
last few years I have been experimenting with small paper sculptures (obviously
more play). I am drawn to other artistic disciplines but as a spectator, since
being what I am has been something so definite since my childhood that no other
possibility ever occurred to me.
Which painter would you have liked to interview?
I don't know
whether to interview but whether to listen to them, see them in their workshop,
witness their creative action. I imagine that a long after-dinner with Dalí
would have been a wonderful experience.
Do you think
that the Gallery matters a lot in an exhibition?
Yes and no.
The Gallery as a physical space matters, because it can determine that the work
is exhibited in its greatest splendor and allows direct contact with the
public. It can be useful if the Gallery is in charge of publicizing the event
and attracting spectators. But the work can also be exhibited in other ways, in
not so conventional spaces, disseminated with the multiple resources that
technology facilitates today. The Gallery is no longer the only means for an
artist to project and display their work, we are no longer tied to that
dependency. The massiveness of the internet has turned the traditional art
market and its rules completely upside down. And these days, COVID pandemic
through, we have been pushed at full speed towards those other channels of
dissemination and contact.
What do you
want to convey with your works?
The
enjoyment of the creative act, sharing a little bit of the pleasure that comes
from running through each work. That the viewer have a pleasant moment of
enjoyment when stopping in front of one of my works.
What would you advise people who are starting in the world of painting?
Let them
stick with what they enjoy, regardless of the immediate result. Developing the
personal voice as a pleasant action, not as a struggle to please others but as
the wonderful privilege of continuing to play our favorite game even as the
years go by and accumulate.
