On the artist's relationship with time

Your paintings offer such an enchanting meditation on the natural world. It’s as though you have your ear to the ground and are listening with delight. I’m curious about how the natural world has influenced your process?

It’s had a really big influence. After I moved from my apartment in Mexico City into a space with more access to nature, I started observing and working with plants, and I realized how much plants respond to the environment. They respond to the season, weather, and the kind of lighting they receive. Sometimes they bloom, the next season they don’t. And that’s changing how much effort I’m putting in my own process. If I’m working too much on one piece, or doing something that’s too hard on my body, I’m now questioning it and trying to implement something new. I try to optimize my energy in the same way plants do.

Right now, I’m listening to flowers a lot. I have this ingrained concept that flowers are pretty, so I’m trying to ask myself to find the beauty in the ugliness of the flower, in the vulnerability of the flower. I was reading Joan Mitchell’s biography, and I loved how she always rebelled against all these things that society imposed on her as a woman–how we always have to be presentable, have manners, all these things. So when I make a mistake, I now ask myself, “why do I believe this is a mistake? Is this really a mistake?” That’s the reason why my art can look a little bit more chaotic now, and a little bit more, I mean, to a certain eye, a little bit more ugly if you look closer. Because I’m trying to explore that rebellious side of femininity, of being a woman.

How delicious! I appreciate the deviance in your process, particularly in how you’re reaching for the underbelly experiences that many don’t let themselves explore with such curiosity. You and I had spoken previously about chronic pain, and I wonder how you negotiate with your body and pain within the context of your artistic practice?

Pain’s a limitation, for sure, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing at this point. The judgment comes from us. Pain exists, and yes, it can be a limitation. But sometimes limitations are beneficial. Sometimes we go too hard and need to slow down. I used to see it with my cat a lot. She was always very frantic, and she had all this energy but would get herself injured. I always saw the lesson in that. If you have all this energy, and you have all this potential, that’s so powerful. But if you’re not careful, you could hurt yourself, so then you have to learn to harness the power that you have, and the kind of energy that you have. We all have this energy, everyone in their own way, but when we hit a limit, that’s a lesson to adapt. So I would see pain as an invitation to change something. It’s kind of with nature, we think we know best, but nature knows better.

It’s funny, you know, since pain and aging have been unveiling themselves to me, I realized that when you have a limitation, other sides of your imagination, perception, and sensibility develop. You might have one limitation, but your life force energy isn’t less. I started drawing before I learned to walk. My body was very weak, and they used to put me on the couch and I would fall, and I couldn’t even crawl. And then later, as a little girl, I would try playing with other kids, but my body was always less able than the bodies of the kids around me. But at the same time, I was always drawing all over the house. Some limitations over here, other abilities over there. I really believe we have to find our strengths on the other side of our limitations.

That makes me think of artists like Frida Kahlo and Suleika Jaouad, who’ve created such larger-than-life works while lying down, even channeling their fever dreams through their paintings. That brings me to a curiosity around your relationship with time, and whether chronic pain has rewired that relationship in any way?

Definitely, chronic pain has honestly played a really important role in changing my decisions. Living all my life in the city, growing up there, time was scarce. I used to work on computers, and I quit those jobs to take care of my body and find a better environment for it. Then I realized I gained a lot of time in choosing to do that. Once you have time, you realize how valuable it is. I think time is honestly the most valuable thing we have.

I’ve learned that getting up earlier helps a lot. I never imagined I would say this. If you saw me 10 years ago, I would be like, “What? No.” But yeah, I noticed getting up earlier and going with the flow of the light, of the natural light, it helps a lot. It starts working in your favor. Actually, in Mexico, we have a saying that says, “A quien madruga, dios le ayuda.” It means, “The one that gets up early, God helps.”

I also think time can be stretched, it’s just all about perception and about where your attention is. I honestly think the slower you’re able to go, the richer you are. I’m making art when I’m moving my body in front of the canvas, but then I think about time spent in the garden, staring at bushes, or doing other things that are also part of my process. The work starts becoming more abstract when I transform time that way. Even when I first started painting, I was doing very hard edges, defined. It was very colorful, and there were a lot of lines, and a lot of clear paths of colour. But then I started feeling the need to move away from this, and I started experimenting with blurring the edges and not always having harsh lines. Everything kind of just opens up when you slow down.

Yes! I’m a firm believer in moving at the pace of trust, and slowness is such a connection point to trust because we’re essentially cueing our bodies into ease and surrender. I somehow always remember that I’m part of something bigger when I move slowly. You’d previously mentioned taking a 10-year break from making art. For artists who feel they’re running out of time, what would you tell them?

I’d always wanted to be an artist, but I didn’t go to art school or commit earlier because of the environment I was in. Art wasn’t considered an option there. I heard things like, “You’ll never make money with art. Art is not a job.” It took me a long time to get rid of those stigmas. Then, during COVID, I took a small online clay workshop. Working with clay was actually what made me realize I had this vision that when I retired, I would finally paint. Then I realized, “Why do I have to wait to start painting? What if I die tomorrow?”

That’s the main reason why I chose painting as the material I work with. It’s something that I want to do every day, or as much as I can, and I can see myself doing it forever, until the end. I think it’s important for anybody to be able to see themselves enjoying what they do every day, regardless of goals, or ambition, or whatever. It’s mostly an everyday practice.

It’s a process. And I mean, we’ve been educated to do the opposite. It’s just recently that we’ve started hearing about more body awareness. Before, we have been in the belief system that the mind goes before the body. And that establishes a certain world, if you choose to see it that way. I used to be the queen of living in my mind. Just my ideas, and my obsessions. And all these experiences, with my body, and pain and limitations, have pushed me to be more grounded, actually. And I feel that our bodies have their own way of calling to us, and every one of us has the choice to listen. Or to not listen. It’s your body. But if you feel a strong call, if you feel strongly within your body that you want to do something, do it.

It’s incredible how far we’ve moved from such a primordial awareness of ourselves as nature. I have such reverence for artists who choose to create from that place, because it’s touching something really tender for the collective, and we’re all better for it. All my flowers to you Ileana, thank you.

Thank you so much. I like to thank the work, too. I’m always going through my own processes with the work, and the work is also supporting me back. I hope we move out of the capitalist system of the mind into a system that centres the body. Because nothing is truly separate.