Hummingbirds and Cactus Painting

I have been painting with oils on canvas since I was 12 years old. My love for nature led me to educate me in Venezuela as a biologist, specialized in conservation ecology of threatened animal species and ecosystems, with which I worked actively for more than 20 years. Because of my studies at the university, painting became intermittent but always present in my life. Several important moments marked those returns to painting: the birth of my son and major changes such as country moves (France, Sweden, Brazil), making me understand that my creative process was intimately linked to my life experiences. In 2012 when I moved to Brazil, I took up my painting with a much greater force, giving it more space in my life. At that time, I went through a process of internal transformation that has deepened more and more over the last few years. I went from wanting to study nature, observing it from reasoning - registering, classifying, cataloguing and calculating statistics - to wanting to observe it from contemplation, absorbing its shapes and colours, to paint the light and beauty that it emanates. Thus, I was replacing my binoculars and sheets with my brushes and in 2018 I managed to start dedicating myself full time to my art. Part of my decision started in 2016 when I won a scholarship to participate in a meditation retreat for artists in Thailand; those weeks in isolation and internal connection ended up strengthening the certainty of my new path and planted the foundations of my art, now filtered through the eyes of my internal experiences. As a consequence, my painting and creation process was completely transformed and revolutionized as well. My works began to reflect my fascination with the natural world that surrounds me, the incredible biodiversity of flora and fauna that exists and its teachings. In my paintings I represent a balance between the real and the surreal: I accurately paint real animals (mostly birds, mammals) and trees that I observe where I am and during my travels, but placing them in dreamlike abstract backgrounds, with or without elements of the habitat in which they live. Currently I live in the heart of the Amazon rainforest in a protected area in Manaus (Brazil) and that makes me surrounded by constant inspiration, which is why I paint many Amazonian or Latin American wildlife species.