Works & Themes
To comment briefly about my painting, I would like to say that it is rooted in personal experience. I look for beauty not only in the traditional sense but also in trying to reach an original way of expression.
I love to paint flowers and landscapes as I admire their beauty that we can compare to the beauty of the human body. But I think that it is impossible to recreate nature perfectly. In my opinion, an artist can only emulate it as nature becomes a new reality through his/her hands and mind. This new world is what the observer can appreciate looking at the work and feeling the mystery that the paintings embody.
I have developed my work around various themes and have investigated techniques
such as watercolour, oil painting, engraving, woodblock printing, pastels and Japanese painting, among others. Through my paintings, you may appreciate different approaches. I produce a
series of symbolic works as well as abstract paintings where colour and shape denote vividness.
I remember here a beautiful poem by Richard Robbins, one of my dearest teachers, who always encouraged me to follow a personal
path within the expression that painting allows us.
"Bleached, purged, chastened,
Under the snow, under the ice, jagged, sharp,
Cold green and blue,
White darkness,
Under the clouds, the flat grey, horizontal, trammelled,
Live, still life."
Richard Robbins, Moment, Richardson Press, London, 1988.
Statement
Since I was very young, I have shown an interest in Art. Already in my childhood, I used to look at drawings, paintings or sculptures around me. I would say that was from that time that all started. My interests are mainly painting and illustration but I admire the
work of other artists in several areas like sculpture, textile arts or engraving among others.
We all know painting is a way of expression beyond words. This is something simple but, at the same time,
difficult to assimilate when we start to paint. The reason is that painting is a need, not a choice. When I paint, I create an image, an object whose usefulness is not immediate. Only after some time can I appreciate its value, even its ability to enter unknown corners of my personality and exercise its healing power.
While painting there is an encounter with myself through the interaction with the surrounding world. Because painting requires moments of introspection and isolation. However, expressing is a collective act. There is no expression without a potential viewer, nor can we create only from within our internal world.
Among my works, you can see completely abstract paintings or symbolic ones. I choose abstraction or figuration according to the best way to express a feeling, a thought about daily life or a fantasy. In some works, semi-abstraction, which combines figurative
elements and pure abstraction, has given form to the world I wanted to recreate and share.
However, I insist, that it is the expression that gives soul to the painting. For this reason, I exercise my ability to “say without words”. By bringing together technical and conceptual elements, the true meaning of the painting is aroused from the balance between
self-expression and craftmanship.
Indeed, technique, colour, shape and composition are basic and essential elements for creation, but not the aim of the work. Furthermore, our paintings and drawings are not isolated. If an artist tries to put in order his or her work, it is obvious that several
connections to past and present representations will appear. One work might be connected to other people’s creations like passing them on from one epoch to another. And, what’s more intriguing, there seems to be some sort of telepathic transmission of feelings and ideas between artists belonging to different moments in history.
Certainly, I witnessed my own time but cannot reject the influences that the meaning of art had in other periods or for different cultures.
Isabel Jiménez, 2024.
Please visit the Spanish version to see more of my work.
If interested in Japanese culture and language visit Nihongokeshiki