Hi John,

Today's selection is an interview with artist, Jessica Oliveras.

Jessica, a fine artist based near Barcelona, Spain, is inspired by deeply personal experiences that she articulates beautifully though figurative work infused with color and pattern.

Connecting art with emotion has long been in practice but we thought you'd enjoy reading about her process and inspiration.

Enjoy,

BoldBrush Studio Team

Her dad is an artist, her mom an art director, so she was always surrounded by art and culture as a child. She was always drawing and painting as a kid - and never stopped. But she didn't commit to a career as an artist initially; when she moved to London as a young adult, she recalls the contrast between the art culture in Spain and that in London. "Spain still has a very classic view of painting - think of the influence of Velazquez - while London was more experimental and multicultural. It was in London, while I was experiencing all of these new elements and influences, that I decided to become a full-time painter."

Jessica just won an award in the September 2021 BoldBrush Instagram contest, for one of the paintings in the latest series she's been working on. Titled Saudade, each painting in this series focuses on the expression of a single eye. "Saudade" is a Portuguese word for "a deep emotional state of nostalgia and melancholy longing for something or someone you love," and Jessica shares the story behind this series of paintings and why these eyes express saudade for her.

While she was in London, where she lived for eight years, she increasingly began to have a sense of nostalgia for her homeland. Her need to reconnect with her roots grew stronger and stronger until it couldn't be ignored, and she decided to move back to her home town. That process of relocation and readjustment, of coming back after being away and responding to that sense of saudade that had filled her during her time abroad, inspired her to paint these eyes. Each painting is a portrait of the eye of someone close to her, and the title of each painting is an adjective that best describes that person. "It was a very natural outcome of the process of reconnecting with my family and home," Jessica said. "Since my family is artistic as well, the connection between my art and family life is seamless. We'll have long conversations about art together as part of our daily life, and so it was natural to find the eyes, which are the part of a face most expressive of the soul, of my family members to be the thing which best expresses that deep connection to this time and place. The painting that won the award, titled "Goodness", is the eye of my mother, and she is such a wonderful person - I know of no one who better embodies the meaning of that word."

She adds that this fulfillment of her saudade doesn't feel like a break in her experience or work done while in London, though: "It's a seamless continuation of my previous life and my past experiences are a part of my present. One of the main themes behind all of my paintings is the connection between universal human existence and my own personal existence - the idea that through art, a single individual's experiences can become universally shared. And I love that my own history contributes to my ability to tell that story."

Her personal style, she adds, really developed during her time in London. "My dad taught me the fundamentals of drawing and painting when I was a kid, and my early works look very similar to his early works, quite a traditional style. That was one reason I moved to London, because I knew I needed to experiment and be exposed to new ideas. That's not to say that I didn't want to work in the same manner as my dad - his work is great! But I knew that in order to really find myself I needed to be exposed to outside influences as well." In London, which has a lively multicultural art scene known for its innovation, she found the diverse influences that helped her break out of her own borders. "I needed that experimental atmosphere. I never actually went to an art academy; I already had the basics from my dad, and I was more concerned with finding things out for myself. I think because I never went through a formal program, it made it easier for me to move away from rules and just try things. I became fascinated by working with bright colors and merging shapes, letting foreground shapes disappear into the background for example. I also found a love of pattern." Her paintings focus mostly on individual women. "I studied midwifery, and worked as a midwife, while I was in London - that was how I supported myself for the first years. The thing I love about being an artist is that all of the threads of your life come together and all of your past experiences come to bear on your work. I've been working with women, at one of the most beautiful but painful and vulnerable times of their lives, since I was twenty-one. The vulnerability of giving birth and the connection I've formed with these women through working with them during this time definitely translates to my paintings, which are about universal human emotions expressed through the female figure."

Her transition out of midwifery to a full-time art career was challenging but rewarding. "I loved my time working as a midwife but being an artist is my calling now and I'm so thankful to be able to focus on art at this time, as well as for the past experiences that work themselves into my paintings." Her advice for other creatives who are looking to transition from part-time to full-time artist: "Know how much you're willing to sacrifice, because it does take sacrifice to get there. What you need the most as an artist is time, so be aware of how you're spending it and make whatever sacrifices you need to in order to give your work the time it needs. And I think making sure your work is faithful to you as a person is essential too - whatever your day job might have been, it's a part of your life and you should honor its presence by letting the experiences it brought to you be present in your artwork. It's easy to label yourself by your 'job', but that is a mistake. All of life is a process of figuring out who you are, and often, multiple jobs or careers are a part of that. None of that experience is wasted, even if a job does not end up being your life work. I would sometimes be caught in the feeling of duality of being both a 'painter' and a 'midwife' and not knowing how to label myself. I thought changing the label to 'full-time painter' would be a massive step, but to my surprise, it was a completely smooth transition. I'm still the same person with all of those individual interests and experiences. It's easy to want to put a simple label on ourselves, but life is too complex for that."

Returning to the concept of saudade that inspired her series, "Eyes are important in all of my paintings; they're the purest expression of one's existence. When you look someone in the eye, you cannot pretend, you cannot lie, even to a total stranger. They represent the inner person. So in this series, I wanted to portray a big idea with the smallest possible part of the face. And the eyes of the people dear to me, the reality I met again after my years abroad, capture that essence of their being. But even though this series is intensely personal for me, I'd like to think that someone who has never met my family and doesn't know what these paintings mean to me can still look at this work and sense the emotion behind it. They bring their own connotations and experiences to the way they see my painting, and then it can connect with a total stranger - this is a beautiful thing!"

Jessica adds that the recent move home, and the process of reconnecting with her deepest inspirations, has resulted in a burst of productivity in her creative life. "I'm in the process of doing a new series currently, and am preparing for an exhibition in London this coming January. I have almost the whole of next year's work planned already - I'm so excited about what I'm doing now and what's coming next."

Many thanks to Jessica for doing this interview with us! You can see more of her work on her websitejessicaoliveras.comor see her in-process work onInstagram. If you're located in or near London, you can keep an eye out for the upcoming show:

The Brick Lane Gallery - London, UK

Collective exhibition "Portraits"

Dates: 4th-17th January 2022

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