Wishing that 2025

Questions…

For society and the art world as a whole.

Actively supporting women artists in my life came very early on and naturally as I set up my own practice. This week, I had the pleasure of joining two incredible women in London and Windsor for two unique art exhibitions.

As I started my art career, I was lucky to join an amazing group that was led by Beth Welch in 2020. This was back in 2019, I knew I wanted to be a visual artist, and had been sketching regularly without knowing how to take the leap.  I had 3 kids, my last one only a few months old.  At that time I felt the only way to be an artist was through formal education.  

I organised myself on a whim and left to see this spectacular exhibition at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid. I was lucky to have great insight from a fellow art friend who had attended the exhibition Ellen Holleman. And the exhibition was what I had been longing to see in a museum, (one not dedicated solely to women artists). I have purposely decided to add close ups of many of the images in the exhibition to share the intimate moments I experienced while. navigating the museum. It also will help you get a sense for the grandeur of these paintings.

Our dreams are shaped and largely determined by so many aspects of our upbringing. Additionally and quite certainly if you are born female, there is a big chance that you will be conditioned throughout your life. Most of us will grow up without realising about this conditioning, it runs so deep in our bones by the time we grow up, we can simply see it as part of “adapting” to the social structure around us.

From the stories we are told (fairy tales and traditional cautionary tales), to the images we see portrayed in art, and additionally to the roles the women in our lives take. The narratives around women are ones of conforming to standards and norms that largely limit us and our potential. I realise I was born with a rebellious soul, but my wild spirit was tamed throughout my life.

May this 2024 continue to be a year where I provide more visibility for women artists in bigger and better ways. This applies to women in history as well as to contemporary artists. So much I have learnt over the past year especially is providing me so much encouragement to continue on this path.

I was grateful to end 2023 by going to the ICA on the 31 December. What an inspiring visit it was. On the entry way there was a commission that was unavoidable and which was a clear reminder of the times we live in. Times of war in several countries, times of uncertainty for many women when it comes to our rights, and also to the rights pertaining to our bodies.

My visit to the Museum of Fine Art Boston (MFA), was nothing short of dissapointing. I went as I had learned about the Strong Women in Renaissance Italy Exhibition, the post I saw on instagram had an accompanying image of Sofonisba Anguissola, an artist I so deeply admire and look up in my own art career.

How does one live a life looking to belong, looking for a place to call home? It was 1996 when I left Ecuador. I was 15 years old, I remember that summer well. A warmth and humidity in the air welcomed me to the US. It would be my first time living in a new country, without going back to the life I knew growing up.

A new cycle is beginning for me. After leading a beautiful community of creatives, organising, and curating 20+ wonderful activities related to art in the last two years, I have decided to step down from leading this community.

It is not always easy to make these decisions, but I know that it is the right one for me. I have invested so much time and energy to building the community and to create the events for it, and it is now time for me to look more after myself, my family and to continue to cultivate growth for my own art practice.

As my art practice continues to grow, and I continue to learn to balance my work with family life, I have been offered opportunities, which have made me evaluate how things were serving me and how they were not. I am grateful for each and everyone of the people I have met on this journey and I am excited to continue to be connected to them and to be a part of their art journeys.

I am excited to also announce that I will be launching a magazine with an amazing team in 2024! You can follow our journey closer here: Magazine We Are Here.

The titled above was the opening paragraph of the curatorial statement for a recent exhibition: arms full, where I collaborated in my capacity as the founder of Female Artists Oslo, and also of the FAO art HUB. I enabled this exhibition, I reached out to Shawna Miller to offer her the opportunity to create an exhibition in our space. I did so for several reasons, because I so very deeply admire her work, because I love her as a sister (she is my sister in law), and because her journey to become a painter also enabled my own journey through me watching her finding her own voice, and making that voice into now two stunning body of works, that I have been so very fortunate to experience first hand.

I find myself in Tulum, Mexico. Life has slowed down, it is meant to be this way, it is meant to nurture my soul and spirit. Unsurprisingly it has sparked creativity, joy and peace of mind; it is also allowing me to see the path ahead clearer.

When my mental breakdown occurred 3 years ago, there were so few things I could manage on my day to day. Even my physical body was telling me I could no longer continue the way I had been doing (overdoing) things. But there was one thing that I managed and which filled me with so much joy and wellbeing. It was nurturing to my soul in ways that I find hard to convey in words.

While in Prague, I got to spend some quality time with dear friends, among them, was my amazing artist friends Monair Hyman, and Theodora Dea, we went together to an exhibition by Alfons Mucha. It was both enlightening and beautiful to see his art. It made me think of how much we have yet to do for equality in the art world. It is so easy to find exhibitions of great male artists, and whole museums and collections of them. But for women artists is a whole new story, one has to dig deep and rarely can one find more than a few artworks in a large museums collection (and that is only on the occasions when the museums hold anything all).

I am ART and I cannot imagine a life without being a painter.

To be creative is a part of who I am at my core. I have never felt it so strongly within me as I do now, that I could have never done anything else in life with more passion. Every book I read about art and art history, reaffirms my desire to paint a history for myself and those around me. So much has been told about people lives, and yet so little is known about women in that process. Because often the stories are told by men, of men.

I am reading the book by Katy Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men, I had so been looking forward to reading her book, as a follower of her account on instagram and also of her podcast. As I rejoiced in every word she is writing about these women, I realise I want to know more. Yet I know that finding out more about them will likely not be possible. This is by far the most comprehensive book I have read about women in art, and yet in a period of 200 years, between 1400 and 1600, there is only 17 women listed. It baffles me to think that of all the creative beings that must have passed this earth, so little is know about so many of them.

My love for portraiture goes back to my childhood, I dreamt of doing portraits, and I went beyond that and I actually made them. BUT (and there was a big BUT) I did not always feel that I was necesarily any good at it. I lacked the confidence. My creativity was not something that I valued, I took it for granted, because I was told growing up that there were things more important in life. How could I have ever envisioned that my creativity would fill me with hope in some of the most challenging times in my life, as I recovered from a mental breakdown.