As I grew out of childhood I appreciated this
more and more. I loved it, and as a teenager my life was enriched immensely
by these countless gatherings of artists, musicians, writers. Those years
were full of meaning and artistic inspiration. I decided to become a painter
at age 16, and took to this enterprise passionately. When I look back now, I
can't help smiling, remembering myself walking in the streets, sighing
before every artistic ornament, sighing
before paintings, sighing before an old facade, a carved door, and even though
now I realize how, in a sense, my artistic boundaries were constrained, I
think it was wonderful and I'm grateful for having lived through such an
experience.
In these times, when one of our biggest enemies is the feeling of
senselessness, of void, of a general categorical disbelief for anything that
we can't explain, of the overvaluation of the intellectual over the sensitive, I
consider myself to be very lucky to have grown up in an environment where
things were flooded with meaning and feeling. Even though it was a world
that could nurture me only until a certain point, it was crucial during my
first and most vulnerable years as an artist.
Later on, it became too
constrained, because it fed on the past and therefore could not offer me a
place in my own future, as a full grown person. Like a baby inside a mother's
womb, there had to come a point where I could fit inside no longer and would
have to be born into my own self. And this was one of the most painful and
frightening experiences I've ever had.
Leaving this safe, appealing, warm,
beautiful existence, where things made perfect sense and where I could
understand the rules of the game to go out into the vast, ugly, confusing
world that had always surrounded our fortresses,
our oasis, and to look there for some new reason to create, to develop an
identity of my own seemed like an almost impossible quest.
Besides, from
the point of view of the people from within, this was a completely senseless
and ridiculous need, and even perhaps a bit of a betrayal. How could I, who
had been brought up in this wonderful environment, with the best aesthetic
values, with good taste, fall into this attraction for vulgar things?
But I did
not find them vulgar. After a long process of looking, searching, of roaming
around the city without knowing what to look for, I suddenly learned to see
in a new way. It took me a long time to understand that I couldn't expect to
find an answer within the aesthetic rules that I had originally been taught.
Until then everything that I drew (for at the time I was more of a
draftswoman than a painter) had a very strong influence of this mixture of
classic, renaissance, timeless flavor. Whenever I looked for inspiration I had
to withdraw from reality and go into an inward spiral, searching within my
feelings, my dreams, my fantasies, and those of my parents and my parents'
friends.
I do not regret having been like this. I feel that nowadays I can still
benefit from that capacity which can at some points be very enriching. But at
that time I definitely needed new motivations to create outside myself and
outside the artistic world I had been brought up in.
In those years, when I
was in this stage, I retired temporarily from the art world to change
techniques, from drawing to painting. I did some travelling in Mexico, inside
and outside the city, and I looked
everywhere in all directions, trying to absorb as much as I could. I wanted to
store images in my memory and do something with them.
