Taking your feet off the ground, at the Storyhouse (Chester).

Last night I had the pleasure to speak about my art at my local Chester Speaking Club, in the Storyhouse.

I broke the ice by opening my speech with a phrase of one of my favourite writers, John Berger:
’To emigrate is to dismantle the center of the world in order to move into a lost, disoriented one made of fragments’.
I chose this quote because it means a lot to me in terms of my experience of moving abroad, transitioning from one place to another, from Argentina to the UK. Emigrating can be a very disorienting experience even though is something you might have planned for a while, there is nothing like the experience itself. It is very fulfilling in the long run but it does take a lot of ‘not loosing the horizon’ kind of vision. A lot of patience and strength. By emigrating you enter a dimension where you are in the constant pursuit of wholeness and unity, because feeling fragmented/disjointed means you are not here, you are not there - where you came from on the first place. Searching for the center is the aim. The center of the world, the center of your own self.

After mentioning this key experience that has shaped who I am today, I enter the world of art and my relationship with it by presenting one of my most autobiographical pieces ‘The Beauty of Fragmentation’. This piece says a lot about the experience of transitioning, moving backwards, moving forwards, putting together pieces of the past and present, the juxtaposition of experiences, people, melodies and colours.

Entering more into my world of art I shall tell you that my speech was called ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ which was basically about the relationship I have with my art. The choice of title, as obvious as it might sound, was basically inspired by the dreamworld aspect of The Beatles song.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes

I feel so reflected in this song, not only by the fact that the girl with kaleidoscope eyes is called Lucy (which has been my not so preferred nickname since I was little, but nickname at last) but by the massive imagination factor involved in the essence of this song. My art embraces that. It invites you to close your down-to-earth-vision and lures you to embrace the possibilities of the unusual.
Half way through my speech of last night, I invited the audience to close their eyes and focus on their breathing, I asked everyone to imagine they were in their favourite place surrounded by their favourite things and people. I encouraged the possibility of thinking about something crazy and unusual, such as jumping off a cliff and landing on a bed of marshmallows (hey, why not?)…or swimming in the sea under a full moon, surrounded by bioluminescent plancton; an experience I, myself had the pleasure to live and one which I will never forget.
The aim of this exercise was to encourage people to take their feet off the ground and connect with their imagination. Why? First, it makes everyone relax and become receptive - generally speaking - and thats a great thing. But I did this mainly to answer a key question most artists are asked: Why you do the art you do?
I do my art because it makes people connect with their imagination, with a world where everything is possible, where you can connect with your past, not only your present, but also maybe even your future.

This is actually doable by the fact that I create bespoke pieces of art for people. Learn more about commissions by clicking on this link.

I truly believe that the world needs more fantasy. It makes everyday life tolerable. Get out of this world in order to come back to it more refreshed.
And, Jimi Hendrix couldn't have said it better: ‘You have to use fantasy to show different sides of reality’.