Veronica Ibargüengoitia | Mexico/ US
www.veronicaIbarguengoitia.com
I am Veronica Ibargüengoitia. I am from Mexico City, and since 2009, I have lived in Houston, Texas. Both these cities, with their dense urban fabric and large-scale architectural forms, have informed my painting process and artistic questions.
In my paintings, I create images of architectural spaces which are both inviting and physically impossible. These images are imagined from photographs I have taken or received from friends. I edit the photographs by hand, reducing them down to their main structures, intentionally breaking the rules of the real architectural spaces they represent.
The geometric forms in my paintings cross over each other, double back, and make unexpected and inviting entrances to somewhere. The paintings unfold in layers, which I imagine the viewer entering, step by step, finding pleasure in the conundrum behind the windows. In the end, perhaps she doesn't realize quite how deep inside the painting she has gone.
- Veronica Ibargüengoitia, Mexico City/Houston
Montrose 5100
Contemporary Art Station: Tell us about how you got started. When did you know you wanted to be an artist?
Since a very young age I remember myself with a brush or a pencil in my hand. For me everything was about working with my hands and expressing my thoughts and my games with drawings or sketches. I was obsessed with museum visits and trying to decipher the way the big paintings were done. I started lessons first of any craft available and later when I was 10 years old formal painting classes. My first medium was oil on canvas and that was love at first sight for me. The smell of the paint and the way I was able to apply it in so many different ways gave me an endless range of possibilities. I wanted to learn everything about it. Making art for me has being linked to my life, I remember as a child carrying my first art table around my house, a wooden pine surface, very simple. I dragged it everywhere to have it handy and keep on making art or drawing without losing time. That table evolved to my first easel which was a desk easel with a case for paintings and brushes and later on a drafting desk in my college years. The easel had always a place in my personal space. In my bedroom, in my living room and now in my Studio.
Pursuing an Art career was not an option supported by my family, I graduated from Industrial Design in Mexico at the Universidad Iberoamericana and worked many years as Interior Designer in an Architect Firm doing Corporate Offices. I always managed to keep my painting classes in Mexico until I moved to Houston, TX. At Houston I registered at The Glassell School of Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and then there I got my Painting Certification and stared to fully commit to my Art professionally.
CAS: What is your process like, from initial idea to the creation of the piece? Do you usually develop the idea for a project before you find the "canvas", or vice versa?
My works refers to Architecture and spaces and part of my process is a huge visual library that I have been building across my life. I take pictures of any interesting space, corner, view, no matter where I am and the type of building. Sometimes I shoot really old constructions others very contemporary.
When I plan a new series of work, I try to focus on one main idea and start searching in my library for all the images that will respond to that. I build from that my compositions. I may use one, two or even three images for one single painting. I edit every image by hand enlarging or reducing some parts and then crop the image to the proportion that will work for me. I reduce that image to a frame of lines and keep on editing to its minimal and translate to the canvas. At the end the final composition or painting not necessarily resembles to the original source. Often, I keep hints of color of each image, but my palette is not determined by my pictures.
CAS: What do you love most about your creative process?
Every step of my process has a unique quality for me. From the beginning where I decide where and how to take the pictures, or when friends give them theirs for my library. All those images keep an inherent quality of significance. That significance is translated in my way of inviting my viewer to my compositions to non-existing places imagined by me. I find pleasure creating in my paintings geometric forms that cross over each other, double back, and make unexpected and inviting entrances to somewhere. I imagine the viewer entering, step by step, finding pleasure in the conundrum behind the windows. I give hints with my color choices that will guide them through my compositions but at the end is up to her and maybe she doesn't realize quite how deep inside my painting she has gone.
Montrose 5101
CAS: What role does art and the artist play in the broader social conversation today?
Writing, music, paintings, poems and any other expression of art will touch an inner part of the human being, a part which is deep inside the person experiencing them. Artists provide this space where expression is given and will recall old or previous experiences or feelings that we were not consciously thinking of them. We, artists provide windows to express and find the channels for them. We are in constant search for them and offer as many possibilities as we can.
These windows provide the understanding of those experiences and a free scenario to revive them, we can break rules in our work and find a way to treat contemporary concerns and open up channels of conversations or broader questions.
CAS: Name a few of your favourite artists and influences.
I have been influenced by the architecture of the cities in which I had lived, Mexico City one of the biggest urban populated cities in the world and Houston, Texas. Both cities informed my compositions. I learned to observe and find the beauty in the chaotic dense landscapes focusing my attention in reducing all the noise around the structures into a minimal expression of them. One of the first artists that I got close to was M. C. Escher, his compositions based on impossible solutions were intriguing for me and the possibilities offered by his drawings. His mastering in handling the medium and perfection in his traces that make us believe the unbelievable. Another artist that has an important meaning for me is Barbara Kasten she is a photographer and following her work gave me clarity in terms of defining more my compositions. Is the exact moment in which a painting is born after the picture is taken. Georgia O’Keefe has always been one of my favorite oil painters her strong abstract compositions and vibrant palettes that emerge from atmospheric blended backgrounds. Many architects as well inspire my work their structures, mostly clean contemporary architecture with bold concrete walls. I can mention some of them Frank Lloyd Right, Michael Graves, Zaha Hadid, Arata Isosaki and Steven Holl among many others.
CAS: What is the best advice you received as an artist?
An artist friend of mine she is 94 years old an exceptional watercolorist. At some point, I was overwhelmed with raising kids and life at that time I was not making art. I had a couple of years of not doing not having the will. Her advice was “Never stop what you are meant to be, you are an artist, your kids, friends and family will be with you or will search for their paths in life but your art will remain with you forever” and she is completely right.
CAS: When did you discover your voice as an artist?
It took me a while, many years of searching. I had the pieces and the base within me but all of them were isolated pieces in a bigger puzzle. I worked previously in many disciplines drawing, painting, foundry and sculpture. For finding my inner voice was a matter of nurturing my primarily medium which was oil on canvas. I disciplined myself in terms of my Studio time the more I was in there the more work and progress I made. It takes commitment and strong will to get in and make work regardless the many frustration moments or dead ends in the way. The pieces started to get into their places and the process came along as well. I started to build more efficiently my visual library and that nourished my compositions. I grabbed my previous knowledge as a designer to reduce all images to layout drawings and everything made sense after that. I have been working like this for the last 5 years refining my process and experimenting with new mediums, surfaces and larger formats.
CAS: What advice would you give to emerging artists trying to find their own?
Is a matter of patience and commitment to your work and practice. Once I read this quote “Everyone is driven by their own talent, heart and instinct. Stop looking what people is doing because then, you will lose clarity of thought. You have to own your decisions and own who you are”, this advice was the best given to me and I share with any artist that asks for one.
We are in this field because part of our personna is linked completely with our creative nature. This desire of constant evolving and making is part of us. We have to believe in that and be true to that, no matter how many repetitions are needed to get to one piece that will be unique for us. When that happens will worth all the effort, the endless hours of experimentation or the time waiting. There is not such a thing for me as a muse whispering at your ear for inspiration you have to work, you have to make, and you have to believe in your talent and your decisions.
Window #10
