Introducing the talented Maria-Gracia Donoso

When and where did you start your practice in the arts?

I started painting when I was very little because I didn't speak when I was a child! I had a lot of traumas in the first years of my life and then I was able to express myself through painting and drawing. I remember that when I was 7 years old they took me to see a very famous child psychiatrist in Chile to do a series of tests with these strange spots and I was fascinated by them. Then they put me in painting classes and also when we went to live in Spain at some point in my childhood I won a painting prize and at school, which was incredible, the teachers encouraged me to have that gift and that's how I started. Then I managed to study in Chile during the dictatorship at a private university that was created during the Pinochet era, very controversial and revolutionary, with very avant-garde teachers, UARCIS (University of Arts and Social Sciences). I only managed to do two years there because I had a child at 18 and went to live in Paris where I later studied at the Sorbonne for Fine Arts and then a prestigious school, extremely demanding but with a spectacular academic level (Met de Penninghen or ESAG). That school was the one everyone knew as the Académie Julien where artists like Matisse, Braque, Bonnard had studied. After finishing five years of hard work and studies, I went to Barcelona to do a Postgraduate degree in Fine Arts, From Printmaking to Digital Art, and then a Master's degree in New Media at Pompeu Fabra.

Do your Latin roots influence your creations?

Of course! Above all, I had a whole period where my work was very political and I was very vocal about the pain of Chile, where I spent my entire childhood and adolescence under a dictatorship and where there was no free expression of anything or anything. I spent my entire childhood under a curfew where you couldn't go out after 5 in the afternoon.

I also think that I express my colors through my paintings, which are very colorful lately. The shapes I'm giving to everything, a last work with ceramics, which is a medium I didn't know about. I have unconscious Latin American references, based on cultures like Aztec, Mayan, Mapuche, but it's a work in progress that I'm just starting. The roots and above all the Latin essence are emerging strongly in me. I love it. It's a wonderful and powerful culture that I'm connecting with from the deepest part of my being.

What is the main theme of your creative work?

That depends on what era we are talking about. I cannot define myself, nor pigeonhole myself into just one style or theme, I am always varying and changing and inventing, sometimes my creation overwhelms me! I have thousands of new ideas and projects to do and carry out but now it is more about healing art or Healing Art. In fact, we are working on a wonderful project with my close friend Monique Allain in a hospital in New York with women with cancer, who through painting can connect with their own healing. We need to help humanity in any way we can and I believe that art is a powerful tool that reaches people's hearts directly through reflection, colors, shapes, sound, emotionality, etc.

My work is divided into 3 sections;

1) Inner lives: These are all the most recent projects where I work with Bio Art, Ecology, Spirituality with philosophical transcendence that questions you and a search for extraterrestrial spaces and healing.

2) Politics: This was a whole past time where I had to exorcise my demons, so to speak, from what we had to live through in Chile during the dictatorship, where as a very young girl I experienced very hard things. My father had been a minister in Chile before and the military came to look for him at my house, breaking in in a dramatic way, a long story.

3) Body: At one time I did many things related to painted bodies, performance and the fascination of what the Human Body is, both internally and in its external form of expression.

What materials and media do you use?

I started painting as a child. Then I did a lot of illustrations for children's stories. But school in Paris completely changed my approach and I started doing things that were less naive, more gruesome, daring, eccentric, and I learned a lot of other techniques like photography, video, installations, and then later I dedicated myself more to technology. But the truth is that I like everything and I do everything! I am also fascinated by engraving, silkscreen, monotypes, and more. Now I am learning ceramics, which is going to be another means of expression, another means to be able to create invisible dimensions and worlds accompanied by videos, sounds, smells, where moments of peace and connection with our hearts occur. That is my mission on this earth.

More information on María-Gracia's website: mariagraciadonoso.com 

and on her Instagram: @mariagraciadonosostudio 

*Elisa Pritzker is a renowned Argentine-American visual artist, independent curator, and columnist. Her catalogues of Art Called Selk’nam are available on Amazon, in both English and Spanish. Questions and/or comments can be contacted through her website: elisapritzker.com  
         
**Are you a Spanish-speaking artist and would like to appear in the La Voz Arts Corner section? Send us an email to escribalavoz@yahoo.com 

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