“ My inspiration lies in the mundane and everyday actions that can remind people the beauty of being alive today. Food instills such a visceral memory of life, it connects people together.”
I was a very observant child and, when I began creating art, and I recognized that realism would hold my attention and patience in such a wonderful place. It was my own small island in my mind where I could escape to wherever I needed. In a cramped single family of five, I would hide a sketchbook and flashlight in the corner of the coat closet; it was my own private place to get lost in thought.
My fourth grade teacher gave me my first real art set on my desk after lunch one day, I thought it was an accident until she said it was a gift. I remember taking it home and inspecting all the different supplies I had never used before from watercolors to pastels. I put the set in a special place and never used it, I still look at it today although the supplies look petrified by time. I took my first art class when I was 12 years old, unless you count drawing along to a VHS tape recording of Pappy Land. I have been so fortunate to have teachers that support me and my art practice, but I’ve been always in search for more meaning. While obtaining my BFA, I began to conceptually understand better the history and significance behind realism as an art form.
In college I dedicated my art practice to oil painting and loved honing in on areas of realism that would feel surreal. It wasn't until after graduation when I went back to my roots and begin drawing on paper again. There was a freshness, an ease, and a remembrance of my childhood when paper and crayons were my only outlet. As a child I would draw on anything I could get my hands on even if that meant on the walls or hidden surfaces under a desk or table. Remembering the beauty of where it all began and how I've changed to grow into the artist I am today only further excites me for what the future will hold.
What have been some of your main sources of inspiration?
My inspiration lies in the mundane and everyday actions that can remind people the beauty of being alive today. Food instills such a visceral memory of life, it connects people together. As a child I wanted to be a chef, watching food network and aspiring to create beautiful edible art. As an artist, I feel like I get to live that dream through my art practice, the possibilities are endless on a blank canvas.
I use my camera to document, I take a lot of pictures but will never consider myself a photographer. Pictures quickly capture my inspiration, the moments in life where things feel perfectly imperfect. I enjoy being able to pull a sample from my own library of life to compose an image. It's important for me to be the vessel that soaks up life in order to show people some of my favorite parts.
I've always been inspired by the human figure and its intricacies, I work from life every opportunity I get. The tricky game of painting/drawing from life is that I'll never be able to truly replicate it, so the areas I choose to focus on inherently become the focal points in the image. By using only parts of the figure, the arms and legs are able to tell a story, and to facilitate voyeurism, I strive to capture the feeling of movement in a still two-dimensional image.
I get a lot of questions as where my business name and alias Maridad comes from. My grandmother was a huge inspiration to me as a child so I decided to combine our middle names (Marie + Caridad = Maridad) it means to marry/combine in Spanish and I thought it worked perfectly with the way I enjoy making art.
What’s the core message you want to convey?
For me, the point of making these illustrations is to let loose and have some fun, and I think people can feel that when they look at them. I am more creative once I've given myself a few rules to play by and each image is created in just a few hours so I never get the opportunity to loose motivation. So far the ideas and options seem endless and that kind of freedom is why I've always enjoyed making art. I want people to find their happiness, I'm not sure if you can ask for much more in a 5x7 print.
What would you recommend to other artists that seek for inspiration?
Usually inspiration will hide right under your nose the whole time. I've had so many instances where analyzing my past art has brought clarity to my current art practice, critiquing art has become my own form of going to therapy. It's also important to experience what artists have accomplished before you and how it can effect what you choose to make/discuss through art. Inspiration is like a tree in that way, there are the roots and all the history that brings you to where it is today. You might feel small like a new weak branch but soon enough you'll grow and flower as the seasons change. You just gotta hang in there!
Viewing local art is a great place to start, being present in the community by creating conversations about your own artistic standpoint. It brings me so much joy to be a part of the amazing artist community here in my hometown of Austin, Tx where some of the best art is just around the corner. Austin also provides many amazing opportunities such as the East Austin Studio Tour, where hundreds of local artists display their work around the east side. Some of my favorite venues in town are:
- Mass Gallery
- Women & Their Work
- Cherry Cola Dog
- Flatbed Press & Gallery
- Contemporary Austin
- Pump Project
Talking to like-minded individuals has always brought fresh inspiration into my studio practice. Asking a local artist you admire to pick their brains over coffee can also be a great way to inspire a new process. Austin has such a diverse artist culture there is bound to be someone you can relate to!
“Don't live life as an artist, live life through the eyes of an artist. Even if your purpose in life is to be an artist/creative/visual story teller, life doesn't always call for paint or pen.”
I was around 6 or so when I showed my initial interest in art - it would be heavily inspired and fueled by my grandmother, Kaye. Or Neenaw as we called her. She was involved with Art Therapy at a rehabilitation center in Lexington, Kentucky. There is a small doodle I did at this time while visiting her, its my first still life done on a pharmaceutical company post it note. A boot-shaped looking vase with a couple sad flowers in bic pen. From then on, I was doodling in the margins of dog-earred notebooks, from kindergarten with Inspector Gadget/Get Smart-esque spies to middle school textbooks.
I don't remember a time I was not doodling or ideating on anything I could get my hands on. I was a fan of coloring books when I was much younger, but I just wanted to create my own cool things. A lot more so to escape a troubled and tumultuous childhood. Small Rural towns don't provide a lot of artistic inspiration, I looked to comic books for both inspiration and escape. I had this one issue of Amazing Spiderman circa 1997 that I copied the pages from over and over again, getting caught dozens of times by this hellish Social Studies teacher.
Yet, again my fated location didn't provide opportunities for great art supplies either. Using what i could - typically an art box kit my mom bought from the Sears Catalogue or an assortment of Crayola Markers/Crayons. Not getting a hold of a paint brush till I was twelve. Neenaw had set me up with oil painting lessons with an old, country-lady version of Bob Ross named Edith King.
From then on I attended a magnet program for the arts in High School - which afterward it was non-stop art, sketching, doodling, painting, creating.
What have been some of your main sources of inspiration?
My grandmother played a major role. Not just in the facilitation and access to the arts - but in a love of color and making your own thing. She always added a bit of her own personal flare or touch to everything she owned: clothes, furniture, home and so forth. Creativity was something you lived not just did.
Of course, my favorite teachers - with few exceptions - were my art teachers. I had some amazing, and patient, professors while attending Northern Kentucky University (NKU). At that time, I was very interested in graffiti artists - mainly mural and poster work. I was in college during the early days of GIANT by OBEY/Shepard Fairey and Banksy, but it was Sam Flores out of San Francisco who got me going - he plays with a lot of confluence between humans and animals, touches of his Asian-American roots aesthetic.
Overall my love of comic books and graphic novels opened up the desire to be a comic book artist in my own right. I was a fan of mainstream names for sure - but it was the one-off Superman/Batman stories that grabbed my eye, those with unique artist/writer mashups. Frank Quitely & Grant Morrison for one - their work on All-Star Superman and New X-men was phenomenal. It was the art of David Mack in Kabuki and Daredevil (also an NKU Alum) that got me on the style of work I aspired to make - watercolors, ink washes, and just a free style of art. It was because of him I wished to attend NKU itself. More recently, finding Rafael Grampa as a newer artist I am inspired by. (Frank Miller's DK is a must)
My travels to the Middle East and connection to Judaism has played a role in my work. Religious imagery and subjects; and an eye for the architecture. There is a lot of color palette, iconography, and lighting being used in all kinds of interesting ways in religion. I have fun combining it with surreal subjects to add this holy aspect of the scene.
My other Artist inspirations: Winsor McCay, Geoff Darrow J.M.W. Turner, William Stanley Haseltine.
Lastly, music - I grew up with an 80's mom who loved Fleetwood Mac, Prince, Robert Palmer, and Madonna - with a grunge rock brother to follow.
I feed off a lot of visually strong artists these days - Arcade Fire - Queens of the Stoneage, The Decemberists, TV on the Radio.
What’s your purpose as an artist?
I always baffled my art teachers when I would explain that my art was just for fun. It was difficult for me to express my feelings through art that read well to others. Art's purpose for me was an escape, something that doesn't exist, a new idea or place. Away from life.
The want to tell a narrative stems from the dream to be a comic book artist, but I want my viewers to come up with their own narratives. I want it to be a snapshot of a moment or from another world that has different stories to tell. Much of my art is derived from an idea I had about a comic book series that went from conceptual character to a series of mutated vegetation.
Art is definitely therapy or a healthy distraction for me. I wear my emotions on my sleeve, painting it down helps properly express myself. Diverting that energy into something I control, followed by a sense of accomplishment. There is nothing like having a finished piece(s) having been made during a time of turmoil or emotional distress. I am one who thrives in chaos and under pressure. It took my mind of my deployment to Afghanistan, a small sketchbook and plethora of sharpies.
What would you recommend to other artists that seek for inspiration?
Don't live life as an artist, live life through the eyes of an artist. Even if your purpose in life is to be an artist/creative/visual story teller, life doesn't always call for paint or pen. You have to be in the moment in-order to enjoy it; that enables you to take the full experience and translate it on paper/canvas with that much more vigor. But always bring something to take notes with - I have mountains of notebooks from my military days that I jotted all my ideas for work and comics, it kept my creative side engaged while I did my job at the same time.
For me - the experiences I had where I couldn't be knee deep in art are what defined me as a person, later deriving what I learned from those experiences to my art. From the Army I understood that if you want to succeed you have to lay those pounds of flesh down - special forces guys are good because they dedicate their lives to being proficient with their craft. If you want to be a big bad artist, you have to start somewhere, from one sketch a day to one sketch an hour. No one starts out as good artists, even those with natural talent, only that can carry them so far.
Curating your Instagram is a good way to have a non-stop flow of inspiration. Follow new and up-coming artists to see what the trends are. Follow artists who do the kind of art you wish you could, they share techniques and advice. Follow other visually strong people, not just the popular people. Don't follow artists who have more photos of them "thinking of the next big piece" or have huge numbers of followers with very little work to show.
If you are nervous about a new medium but dying to dry it out, do an experimental phase with it. Grab your favorite CMY relative hues, just the basic colors Blue Red Yellow even, plus a black of the same medium. This is a low cost investment. Use the colors in the new medium to create small pieces in your style and usual subjects. Experiment with techniques, tricks, and process. If you like the results or feel the potential - then grab a few more basic colors. The scary thing about new mediums is that artists feel like we have to take a header into full kits - when just the basics are good enough.
Embrace your fear of all things in the creative world - for those who are afraid of using colors there are those afraid to use black in their work. For those who are afraid of putting their work in shows there are those who are afraid of going bigger with their work. We learn more from our mistakes than our successes, if art was so easy of a win - every five-year old kid that parents say could do a Jackson Pollack would be rolling in Instagram fame.
“ I like to work on my photography, graphic designs, screen printing, illustrations, and making buttons for my Etsy store- Little Cactus Crafts.”
Follow and visit her here:
Instagram: victoriarosadesign
Website: victoriarosadesign.com
At what age you realized that art was your thing and what triggered that feeling?
At around the age of 5 I started to create my own art. You could find me coloring in a coloring book, sketching out weird figures on paper, or making comic strips of my family. I loved and still love to draw things that come to my mind. I think one of the main things that triggered my creativity was being an introvert. I was really really shy when I was younger and drawing was a way for me to escape and express myself freely. Today I use design and drawing as a way to that too. It is a great way to get my mind off of stress and all the crazy stuff going on in the world.
In addition to your own creative expression, what other things do you like to work on?
I like to work on my photography, graphic designs, screen printing, illustrations, and making buttons for my Etsy store- Little Cactus Crafts. I am always trying to teach myself something new through the mini-projects that I do. I mainly do this by watching YouTube videos, reading blogs, doing freelance work and reading books by graphic designers.
What's your purpose as an artist/creative?
This is a good question…I think my purpose is to create things that make people happy or reflect on themselves. A lot of my illustrations and designs have to deal with self-reflection which is something that I always do. I do not want to say something like “change the world” because I like change at a micro level. This means that making a difference in one person’s life through my art means more to me than anything else.
What would you recommend to other artists that want to keep their creativity flowing?
I recommend for artist/designers to always learn something new. If you think you are the best out there, you will never be the best. Stay humble and make an effort to pick up one new skill a day or week. I personally collect books by my favorite designers, I make playlist on Youtube of tutorials I want to learn from, and I participate in events by AIGA in the community. AIGA is a great way to connect with other artist and learn new skills! Overall, find ways to stand out and learn more about your craft.
Had a great day at the East Austin Studio Tour. Hundreds of studios open their doors to the public,for free, all over the city.I fully intended to take aaall the pretty pictures but my battery died half way through the day :(
Top, Right and Middle: group exhibition at #canopyaustin
Bottom Left: Art installation at #sistercoffee
Bottom Right:Screen Printing demo at Holly Lane home studio
