BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE make BEAUTIFUL Things
PHOTOGRAPHY: EZEQUIEL DE LA ROSA MAKE-UP: CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL HAIR: ARMANDO STYLED BY: JASON LYON FROM MORPHEW MODEL: SNOW DOLLKINSON THANK YOU: @SHOPMORPHEW
Do you remember what you were thinking when you made this painting? Is painting more a mental or emotional exercise? Do you generally think about something specific or rather try to capture a feeling? There are for me several ways to approach my creation. Most of the time I don’t have a particular concept or a storyboard in my head; I just go with the flow and the inspiration of the moment, leaving the feelings and the emotions to guide my hand. The painting reveals itself to my eyes as it would to an audience and it makes me discover sometimes some aspect of my personality and my sensitivity that were till then unknown to me. Sometimes, it also happens that I work on the series of paintings that are telling a story relating to a particular psychological aspect. In that case, I work first on a mini-storyboard that I have made during my daily breaks, sittting at the cafe, in a cab, or waiting for a meeting... during any window of my schedule. When I start to paint on the canvas, then the feeling and the emotions will still be the main guidance to my creation.
This painting seems to strike a common theme you have returned to in a number of paintings. Among followers of your work, is this a popular style? What kind of reactions or comments do you receive on it? What is your favorite comment or reaction to it? This painting is one of a series that is actually the last period of my work, a period still in progress through many variations. My followers and collectors are actually very enthusiastic about it, and it seems that it talks to everyone about something very personal, digging deep in our core and often awakening some of our strongest emotions.
My first impression in seeing this painting was of the story, Alice in Wonderland, and that the painting captured how it might look to see the sky from inside the rabbit hole that Alice fell down. It was dizzying for a moment! That impression was reinforced for me when I read that you were scouted at the age of 15 to become an international model. That must have been a dizzying moment for you. Did it feel something like falling down the rabbit hole?
The paintings of this particular series are offering to our eyes the contrast of a giant white hole just in the middle of a dense and dark forest. It gives us the impression that we are lying in the grass looking through the hypnotic sky to the infinite of the universe. As with the allegory of Alice in Wonderland, those metaphoric images speak about the notion of passage. It is not so much about falling but more about crossing and evolving to the unknown; the interpretation of this white can also bring the notion of the “white page”: you write on it the story that you want, all your desires and all your dreams are just about to be true. There is of course, also, a very spiritual point of view, how to ignore, for the believers, the white light at the end of the tunnel, the passage to the other life.
In my modeling career I have experienced this moment of transition several times, in particular at the moment I just started on the catwalks [podiums], alone, far from my country, far from my family, when I was suddenly projected, like a bullet from an unfinished childhood, to the toughness of the adult world.
At what moment did you feel that modeling was a career you chose for yourself rather than one that was chosen for you? Modeling was not chosen for me, even if I was very young when I started this career. It was proposed to me and for some reason that I still try to figure out, being at that time still very naive, I woke up and understood very fast the reality of this adult world, the twist of it and the traps that I should avoid.
Where did you learn to draw and paint? You have spoken about the influence of your early years, your family home, and your father on your desire to create art and on your style. Did you engage in formal training as well? How important do you find such formal training to be? Or is it less important than some people might think? Beside the non-formal education that I had through the inspiration and the advice given by my father, I took some private lessons in my home town to learn different styles. When I was modeling in Paris, I had the chance to work by the side of the French artist Paul Marsignac, who is known for his paintings and his illustrations, and he became a mentor to me. Of course education about the different techniques and different mediums is important to give you the necessary basis necessary for artistry, but it can also very fast become a trap and thereafter bring limits to your wildness and to your freedom of creation.
Have you ever considered figurative portraiture as an artist? What is your favorite photograph of yourself taken? Would you ever consider attempting a self-portrait? I often draw figurative sketches but those characters are always coming from my imagination. I love to contemplate the portraits made by the masters through the centuries but it is not an exercise that I am into. In general I do not work on a subject that is standing right in front of my eyes. I prefer when it leaves a trace in my memory and when its character and physical appearance starts to morph with the emotional and psychological impression that it has left to me.
How do you give back, as a model, an artist, a woman and a human being? Voltaire’s Candide spoke of “Tending one’s own garden;” well, I try to make my garden as large as possible and then to be the best host.
You have spoken about your desire as an artist to express your optimism. This seems to be a quality in relatively short supply these days, especially in the political and social arenas. What can we all do to inject more optimism into our engagement with each other, and into our day-to-day lives? We have first to be in peace with ourselves before beginning to expand our energy and being efficiently able to help others. When this is done, we have in our hands the best tool to go forward in life and to assert positively ourselves in the social world.