The human soul is my greatest source of inspiration. Thus, the connections between psychology and art have been my passion and the constant subject of my paintings. I became fascinated with this theme during my practice as a clinical psychologist, an experience that helped me to infuse my art with principles based on different lines of thought in psychology (Freudian concepts, ideas from phenomenology, concepts of the psychology of Gestalt and some Jungian concepts are particularly important to my artworks).
Since I moved to Minnesota, instead of continuing my clinical practice, I have centered my focus exclusively on painting, making it my way of stimulating people’s psychological dynamics. The intention of my work is to motivate people to creatively question what they are seeing, and to get in touch with their innermost being. For me, art is a type of embodiment in which experience creates matter that creates experience. It is a sensitive phenomenology that awakens perception by addressing the senses directly.
I usually create series of artworks in which I explore topics related to the connections between art and psychology. In several of my oil, encaustic, mixed media and wearable artworks, for instance, I reflect on the concept of memory. My series of abstract landscapes, are a collection of memories, feelings and impressions gathered during my travels. Every landscape I create is a way to pay homage to special places I have been to, transforming them into a journey of storytelling and memoir.
I am also particularly interested in the qualities of matter and media that make the passage of time more visible. From my perspective, the passage of time is intimately associated with a multitude of psychological dynamics and highlights the idea that the act of seeing is actually an act of comprehending. We see things not only with our brain, but also through our experience, and this experience is part of an array of psychological processes that go beyond our awareness.
I am an unsettled artist and have explored a variety of art forms during my life. In addition to painting, I have worked intensely with wearable art. My jewelry collection is a group of wearable artworks in which I encase fragments of my large sculptural encaustic reliefs to create necklaces, bracelets, earrings and rings that express my vision of a confidence-inspiring beauty.
Thus, in all my pieces, I seek to play with elements pertaining to the act of producing and beholding art to reflect on the connections between images and the mind. As a psychologist, I am interested in the complex relationship between the viewer and the act of seeing. As an artist, I am deeply interested in the continuous feedback between matter and sensation that opens up perception. Images, for me, are a psychological experience of pleasure, culturally determined and socially legitimated.
