Patricia Ariel interview - 2011

Name: Patricia Ariel

Black Cat aka Didi: Please give us a brief bio, where you are from and how you started in this field?
Patricia Ariel: I am originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I have always been into the arts, not only visual, but also performing arts and even music. I have an academic background in Arts and had some formal training in drawing, but never took it too seriously to the point of making a career out of it – well, maybe when I was a kid. But when I came to US, in 2005, I saw myself in a sort of limiting situation regarding to communication, since my spoken English was not great and I could not do any of the things I used to do in my country, like teaching or acting. I have this incredible need to communicate and express myself and I decided that non-verbal communication was all I had, so I started to revive my passion for drawing and produce a few watercolors with fantasy and mythic themes. I started to show my works on the internet and it didn't take long until selling my first work.

B.C.: Who do you feel were your greatest artistic influences? Do these influences continue to play a large role?
P.A.: I have been always very drawn to the work of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Art Nouveau/Jugendstil artists. Artists like William Waterhouse, Evelyn De Morgan, Burne-Jones, Mucha, Beardsley, and Klimt played a large role in my taste for depicting myths and symbols, for the spiritual in the visual arts and the decorative elements. I still see my art being strongly influenced by them, mainly by the Jugendstil movement. Although I have been attempting to bring my art into a more contemporary approach, I am always falling into a certain formalism in my figures and seem not to be able to escape from patterns and swirls...

B.C.: Could you tell us about some of your work?
P.A.: I would like to talk not about a piece in particular, but about this new body of work I am building, that, in my eyes, represent a certain technical maturity over my former works on paper and a balance between my older style and my newest approach. I am using basically mixed media on gessoed masonite panel, being less generous in the use of color, and more focused on the details and on the draftsmanship. Conceptually, I want to create characters and fragments of stories that will connect to the viewer in an archetypal level. I am attempting to work more in the direction of metaphors and poetry, creating my own mythology and taking more care in the construction of the figures, protagonists of those stories.

B.C.: How will you describe your style?
P.A.: My style is always in flow, but it is basically a hybrid of painting and drawing, and it is figurative and symbolist in essence. I enjoy intertwining abstracts with figurative work as a way to depict the spiritual/material worlds as a single reality. I am really drawn to the energy of color, but in my current phase I am attempting to enhance more of my draftsmanship, imaginativeness, and the decorative details. I also give a lot of importance to beauty. In my world, beauty is frequently above concept. I am always focused in producing beautiful things in first place, because I want my art to be democratic, and beauty is the shorter path to the hearts of people. Even when I use “darker” elements in my work, they have to be surrounded by beauty.

B.C.: How separate are you from your art?
P.A.: Not a bit. My art is what I am and shows the things I believe, the characters that come to speak to me in my lonely moments, and the way I see the world. There's no way to separate my personal reality from it. It is all a single thing.

B.C.: What are you trying to do to people with your art?
P.A.: To inspire and empower. To reveal truths about the human soul. I hear a lot of people saying that my work makes them want to create or do positive things for themselves, what for me is a huge accomplishment. I really want my work to be like a mirror in which people see themselves reflected, and a vehicle for positive changes.

B.C.: What do you see as the strengths of your piece, visually or conceptually?
P.A.: I think my drawing skills is the best I have, and I really enjoy how the realistic figures interact with more imaginative or stylized elements. As much as I love a more expressionistic and loose approach in art – and I hope I can achieve that ideal someday -, I feel totally comfortable using a more traditional approach. The other strength, that I wouldn't really call “conceptual”, happens in a more spiritual level. Based on the constant feedback I receive, I think my work has the power to connect to people in deeper levels. I think that comes from the profound passion I have for what I do and for the emotional truth I always attempt to convey.

B.C.: What are your dreams/plans/goals for the future?
P.A.: Not very different from other emerging artists I suppose... I want to grow in my career, to keep improving, to learn more and keep using my work as a vehicle to speak to the emotional/spiritual. I also want to find new ways to serve the society through my work, promoting equality and progressive and spiritual ideas. I also have other more specific plans, like drawing a tarot deck or my own set of oracle cards, and illustrating my own fiction stories. I surely want to have a lot to keep me busy until I have no more energy to hold a pencil.

B.C.: Thanks Patricia for your time and your attention and good work!

• Prev
• Next