Artists Who Inspired Me at the Beginning of My Journey and Still Inspire Me Today
Throughout my artistic journey, there are artists who have had a profound impact on my path and who are still present in the way I see and create.
The first is César Manrique, that great artivist who not only displayed an enormous creative talent, but also protected his home island, Lanzarote, from the uncontrolled expansion of concrete and tourist speculation, at least for a while… Through his ideas, his love of nature, his joy of living and his environmental activism, he left an inspiring light that is still alive in my artistic practice.
Another fundamental influence has been Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the Austrian architect, painter and environmental artivist who completely turned my perception upside down. His “tenant trees”, his rejection of straight lines — “straight lines are for machines” — and his vision of an undulating ground as a “harmony for the feet” transformed the way I understand space and form. I even travelled to Austria specifically to visit his museum. His vibrant colours, his defence of the planet and his works, where nature, whales and organic life expand and flourish, continue to inspire me today.
Later, when I arrived in London in 2002, I discovered Banksy. I remember travelling on the guagua — the word we use for bus in the Canary Islands — and seeing one of his images for the first time: John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson holding a banana. Perhaps it struck me so much because I had just arrived in this huge city from Tenerife. Those figures holding a yellow banana as a weapon, surrounded by the grey urban landscape, sparked my curiosity.
Every day, on my way to work or to my English classes, I would come across another one of his works. I kept seeing that name, Banksy, without really understanding who was behind it. I asked questions, did some research, and discovered his beginnings, his mysterious interventions and the intelligent, bold social criticism that ran through all his work. He seemed to me to be one of the most socially committed artists I had ever encountered. I started buying books about his interventions, watching his documentaries and following his work.
Over time, although marketing and the art industry have grown around his figure, he remains an artist who deeply impresses me. His work continues to point precisely to the wounds in our society, using a visual language that only he has managed to create in quite that way.
If there is one artist who continues to move me every time I return to her work, it is Frida Kahlo. Her art, so intimate and deeply human, always reminds me that art can be a refuge, a way of transforming pain into beauty and celebrating life even in the midst of adversity. I am inspired by her radical honesty, the intensity of her colours, the symbolic strength of her images and, above all, her immense desire to live. Frida turned her own existence into an artistic language, and that ability to create from the most intimate parts of herself continues to accompany me.
Over the years, I have also discovered many other women artists who are now part of my creative universe. Curiously, most of them came into my life long after I finished my degree in Fine Arts. We studied art history for years, yet we barely encountered the work of so many extraordinary women who made fundamental contributions. That absence made me realise how much there is still to revisit and bring to light. Even today, I still feel the lack of those female references that never appeared during my education.
I am inspired by such diverse artists as Artemisia Gentileschi, Maria Sibylla Merian, Tamara de Lempicka, Hilma af Klint, Georgia O’Keeffe, Tracey Emin, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Louise Bourgeois, Pino Ojeda, Jane Millares Sall and Hyuro. Each of them, in her own time, language and way of seeing, opened paths for those of us who came after.
I could go on naming many more, because the list continues to grow. Discovering their lives and their work has also been a way of reconstructing my own artistic genealogy, of finding a creative family that remained invisible for far too long.
That is why I feel the desire to give them space in this journal. I want to share their work, learn from them and, however humbly, contribute to keeping their names alive. Because getting to know them not only enriches our understanding of art history, but also provides references for new generations of artists, especially women who are beginning to create and looking for themselves in those who opened the way before them.
Each one opened paths for those of us who came after...