Persephone Painting

My name is Maria Arias, I was born in Venezuela, and I started painting at the age of 8 years old. Because of the hard schedule of the school, I went to, I stopped painting at the age of 12. I followed engineering studies and graduated in 2003. The next year I moved to France, running away from the chaos of my country, and leaving everything behind. I arrived in France with nothing, not even the knowledge of the French language. I finished doing my master’s degree and got a Ph.D. in chemistry. In 2007, I moved to the Netherlands where I could finally feel at home again. I work 4 days as a Chemical Engineer and almost 3 days as an artist. I started painting again in 2016. Furthermore, I started with a basic acrylic course at , and then I learned by myself for a while. I took several workshops and masterclasses with several artists. My favourite artist and teacher is Marissa Oosterlee. As an animal defender During an exhibition in 2007 at the Gallery Codex Nicaragüa, A man pretending to be an artist presented a “work” that made me wake up and decide that actions shall be taken from now on to help animals. In a gallery, he exposed a stray malnourished, and scary dog to the visitors. The dog was part of his art, and on the wall, it was written with dog food “You are what you read.” This crazy and sadic man left the dog starving and dehydrated to probe the indifference of people. I couldn’t believe it! At that moment I start some campaigns to help animals, one of my drives was , it was a naïve idea, but it worked. I had collected sufficient medicine to neuter more than 20 dogs in Venezuela. I was in Holland, but I coordinate everything at distance and travelled several time to Venezuela. I knew a group of volunteers that were taking care of a group of dogs living in a university. It was perfect for catch, sterilize and release in a safe area. I visit those dogs and kiss them, hug them, clean them. We took all the donations and via skype I found a veterinary that said “Yes” to sterilize them for free! And he even had a place where they could spend the night before release. It was so excited how a crazy idea could work so well. The dogs were all doing great, but then someone did something terrible to them. I cannot mention it and I have never got over that, it broke my heart in millions of pieces. So I took distance, I keep helping but by donating to foundations located in Europe.