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Soul:
Painting is a Part of Me
Blanca
Garmendia from Venezuela
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All
photos: Blanca
Garmendia
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Blanca
Garmendia, a young Venezuelan artist,
shares her feelings about what painting
means to her. She lets us have a look at
some of her paintings and tells us about
them.
Have
you ever imagined how your spirit could
look? Have
you ever thought about what your soul is
like?
These
questions, simple in appearance, have made
me think a lot and have given me a
universe of ideas to paint for the last
three years.
In
the beginning, when I was in The Art
School, one of my main tasks consisted in
studying all the things that surrounded
me. I had the hard work of observing very
carefully each thing in front of me to try
to understand its shape and try to catch
its sense.
At
a first look, it seems to be easy because
many people think; for example, that a
stone is a stone, and there is not too
much to study or think about it. But have
you ever thought of the fact that very
simple things like stones can be complex
subjects? Yes, they are because every
single stone has its own shape, color and
even its own smell. Every stone is special
and different than others.
At
the present time, we are so busy and in
such a hurry that we lose the capacity to
observe things. Instead, we just take a
look at them, which is not the same as to
observe and analyze something deeply. From
the beginning of our education, we learn
how to draw objects. All children draw
them in the same way, because we don't
learn how to differentiate things and how
to represent them as they really are. This
is one of the reasons why, when we grow
up, we no longer have the capacity to
observe.
When
we learn to "observe" things instead of
"watch" things, we see the world with
other eyes. In consequence, we reproduce
it differently. Actually I think this is
the work of an artist. In addition, each
person is different and each artist
transmits or reflects his/her personality
to the subject to be created in his/her
representation of the reality.
In
my personal case I have been working on
art since I was a child. In the process of
learning, which I think will never end, my
work has been changing while passing
through different phases. In all those
phases, the idea of the soul was always
present—not as a main idea but, it
was there for the simple reason that all
things have an essence; by consequence,
all things have a kind of soul.
Today
my work consists of a pictorial study
based on the idea that I have about the
appearance of my soul. I can imagine when
I think of this spirit, which all of us
have, that it is like a shiny light inside
of us. For me this light is the energy
that makes us feel. I can imagine this
light as a beginning of all our thoughts
and acts, like a source of energy that
everyone carries inside, which is at times
light and dark at others. Is very funny to
imagine a lot of lights floating in the
air when I am walking in the street and I
see the people passing.
In
my paintings, the soul is represented by
twilights and shines that are present in
spread surfaces and show how this light
shines. This light also has a relation
with feelings so that is why sometimes,
for example, I represent the soul by
showing a dark light as a blue feeling or
a bright light as a joy.
I
used to use in my paints tones between
yellows and violets, trying to show this
light without any reference to a real
thing like a sky, and trying to show this
mysterious light as a light from inside of
us and not from our exterior. They are to
me like soul's landscapes.
Painting
for me is not something additional that I
do; it is a part of my life. To take a
brush, to smell the oil's aroma, to feel
the texture of a surface, to play with the
density of color by adding more oil or
turpentine, to be sleeping and suddenly
awaken thinking about the pictorial
composition that I recently made or about
the wrong or the right color that I put on
five hours before, to know that as things
of the world are different, paints are,
too…All these experiences are some of
the reasons why I don't think -as many
people do- that painting is something of
the past, that it is an obsolete
discipline that has to be replaced by new
art expressions because "Everything in
paint is already done."
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