My true love

Art is my life.  My true love

I discovered my attraction towards art very early in life, watching my dad’s paintings, mesmerized by his ability to draw and the spectacular use of colors in his work.  He is a very gifted artist, but he keeps his craft to himself, hiding his work behind doors, not allowing a lot of people to see it.

Instead of painting, I found myself gravitating towards sculpture, feeling a tingle in my fingertips at the very thought of me making my personal work of art.  At my elementary school I was well-known for my fantastic petroleum clay dioramas featuring the wildest dinosaurs.   If only my school gave the same value to art as they did to math!

Then a little event changed my life forever: When I was about 10 years old, my mom yelled my name from her room where she was folding the laundry.  I thought for sure I was in trouble! so I cautiously showed up, subtly squinting, waiting to be scalded.

But she was smiling instead, and excitingly pointed at the screen saying: “¡Mira, Mirruña! esto te va a gustar” (Look kiddo, you’re going to love this!) As I looked into the screen, I saw a PSA, one of the many the Mexican government use to produce that were absolutely mesmerizing about our culture.  This one was about the Alebrijes.  I saw the most fantastic creatures, with bulgy eyes, long teeth, inexplicable wings and a mixture of all possible animals.  I fell in love.

After that, Alebrijes became a mission in my life.  I read everything I could find about them, which really wasn’t a lot but I was able to find out that Pedro Linares from Mexico City was delusional and used his cardboard skills to make the first alebrijes in the 1930’s.

Six years later I learnt that our local culture hall was hosting a summer mask and alebrijes class and I got a job to pay for the tuition. That summer marked the beginning of discovering the struggle of being an artist in Mexico.

I faced any opposition you can possibly imagine: from the bashing from loved ones, to the scammers in art galleries to people not willing to pay the value of art, to relatives telling me that women don’t belong in art and that I should quit.  My mom once in the same sentence praised my artwork and suggested me to go to business administration school. Discouraged, I decided to keep art to myself, just like my dad did. I thought the tingle would just go away eventually.

Over a decade later, in which I kept making alebrijes here and there, I moved to the US.  Because the kind of visa I had didn’t allow me to work anywhere, I turned to art and rediscovered that my love was still as strong as my childhood years, my muse was still alive, stronger than ever, ready to take upon new artistic challenges.

Now that I am a mother and I see how quickly life passes by I have decided to fully embrace my true love and stick to it.  Ever since I have shamelessly opened the door to art in my life, I have created my own rendition to alebrijes, honoring my Mexican roots and expressing a deep part of my soul in each work of art.

I hope you enjoy what you see, every piece of my work has a piece of my soul, a message to communicate, a stage of my life that relates to that of many.

Send your feedback and commissions through my contact page.