"Sevillana" Painting

del Castillo PROFILE My early education in Colombia was in Catholic schools. I left home as soon as I could. My moment came soon after graduating from High School when I got a scholarship from the Italian Government to study Renaissance Art in Rome and Florence. I was fascinated by Italy's cultural heritage. Therefore, seeing the glories of the Eternal City at such a tender age overwelmed me. It was natural for me to take out painting. But, my early efforts during the late seventies were not easy. I set out with abstract colored stains achieved by energetic brushstrokes. The result was a thick surface pigment canvases, heavily worked and reworked, layer upon layer. In few words, it was an impasto!! After sometime, not satisfied with my artwork, I withdraw from painting until the eighties. That's when while staying in the attic of a Victorian house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I started painting again. This time around it was not Rome's Old Masters art that inspired me. It came from a different source. One brilliantly sunny Spring day while gazing out the window, I was charmed by the presence of a seductive Bostonian man who was working in his garden. He stared back at me!... he was all smiles!!. That winter on a moonlit night I looked out the window and I was surprised to see the neighbor's car completely covered by snow. There was a drawing of a gigantic incredibly sparkling heart on top of his car. Here the intensity of the full moonlight against the snow, exposed its own revelation, absorbing the heart into its brilliance. I opened the window for fresh air and, suddenly, I was intoxicated by the thrill of being alive. It all adds to me a terrible urgency to be near the window as often as possible. The solution: I bought a large canvas, hung-it on the house wall and, with an eye on the garden, I started the brushstrokes again. One year of this platonic and romantic apparition, stretched out to four years. The outcome was a series of exhuberant expressionistic paintings. In 1989 I had a few local exhibitions of my work. A One-Woman-Show at the Cambridge Art Council and group-shows at the Multicultural Art Center and at Radcliffe College in Harvard University. That same year I was named Hot-Pick by the Boston newapaper The Tab. Since then I have been creating artwork for years, which hung in private collections, .