The Art of the Symbolic
Carmina VELASCO deals with the symbolic in her painting, which she captures in theatrically staged images. The artist VELASCO was born in 1973 in La Paz, Bolivia. She completed her artistic training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg as a master student of Prof. Rolf-Gunter Dienst and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. VELASCO showed her art in international exhibitions and is represented in international collections.
Carmina VELASCO's paintings are associated with Magical Realism and originates from the mythical and fable world of her native land Bolivia. Nevertheless, it does not follow a trend, but stands for itself in the cosmos of art. In her paintings, the artist translates symbolic narratives and iconic pictorial motifs that radiate an incredible reality and liveliness into a universally understandable language.
Her paintings create a meta-level between fantasy and reality. The absurd, the impossible, the strange in the good sense is deliberately theatrically staged by Carmina VELASCO. The artist feeds her paintings with symbolic set pieces that give the paintings a deeper meaning. The enthusiasm for beauty and the observation of nature are the starting point for VELASCO's work, which make the artist's passion for painting felt at first glance.
Her oil paintings, drawings, and gouache depict human (especially female) figures encountering animal beings. They are archetypes that come from a dream world and show the fateful in VELASCO's painting as symbolic pictorial motifs. The paintings stimulate the viewer to think and evoke a meditative interiority.
For example, the bird stands as a symbolic motif for universal freedom but can also take on the role of a prophet who delivers an important message. The butterfly, on the other hand, stands for change, which the artist considers to be of great importance. According to the motto, if you can't change something, you must change yourself. The lightning-fast hummingbird, which cannot be caught, stands in VELASCO's paintings for the unique opportunity that one should seize without hesitation. In the painting "The Collector", VELASCO processed strategies in people's lives. It shows a woman in profile holding a small fish between her lips. A kingfisher falls on the fish from the right without noticing the trap. You can see more animals caught in the woman's hair already and you can imagine that the kingfisher is swallowed in a moment and thus becomes a part of the woman. With the painting, the artist symbolizes the strategy that you must use to get something you absolutely want.
Carmina VELASCO's series of portraits of writers and composers has already fascinated many collectors. The special feature of the depictions lies in the fact that the portraits are composed of small pictorial motifs that refer to the lives of the portrayed – a biography in pictorial form. The series began with a portrait of Hermann Hesse, followed by oil paintings by Franz Kafka, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Amadeus Mozart, Charles Darwin, Lev Tolstoy, and Giuseppe Verdi.
Carmina VELASCO's work process is classic. In drawings and gouache, which are conceived as their own works of art, the pictorial ideas are first formulated creatively and then implemented in oil - layer by layer - in months of work. About working with oil paints, VELASCO said, "In addition to its visual appeal, oil painting also has a certain smell of turpentine and colours that creates a sensual connection to reality."
Like the scent of turpentine, which gives a subtle aura to an oil painting, VELASCO's paintings exude the allure of the fabulous. The stage-like, theatrically composed oil paintings open a world in which one can indulge in contemplation and come to rest.
Text: Alexander Racz, Nürnberg