Brought up on, and inspired by:
The landscape watercolours by Ipswich draughtsman Leonard Squirrell and the Natural History illustrations of Paxton Chadwick of Leiston and Raymond Sheppard.
Heores include:
(not necessarily in that order)
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Graciela was born and grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Although her education included music and languages, she never took painting or drawing classes. Instead, she pursued a more formal and scientific path which resulted in Graciela graduating in 1986 as a Veterinary Surgeon. Later in her career she struck out on her own and ran her surgery for 15 years. In 2001 Graciela came to England and, encouraged by family, took up painting in early 2004. Even her very first paintings showed a remarkable accuracy and style that soon developed into a mature technique. Although initially painting in watercolours Graciela soon expanded into pastels, charcoal and acrylics. This change of media encouraged her to explore new subjects that have included still life, life class, portrait and landscapes.
Graciela has started to be awarded commissions. Her first commission was to illustrate a poetry book, “Tres para Todos”, Editorial Martin. She was then commissioned by a Government Department to produce a painting of an unusual industrial subject. This resulted in “The Run Up” which was presented to a senior civil servant on his retirement.
My painting is my language, the centre of my existence, symbolising my passions, my fears, my senses and my freedom. It has been with me since I was a young girl ans it is the way I am and how I transcend.
… Seaweed, corals, bubbles, sponges, the water, and specially the submarine world is the subject, and the support, from which I develop my artistic investigations and my self-expression in this series that I have called ” Between Waters “. My creative search starts from the encounter with a subworld that I obsesively observe; it seeks to suggest, and capture, within an abstraction, the essences and climates that are intimately related with the senses. My visual notes occur in the water with its special and idiosyncratic characteristics of being an element which flows, changes its form, overflows, splashes and meets other organisms that inhabit and transform it. I experiment with the contrast between materials, liquid, roughness, transparency, opaqueness, luminosity, darkness, reflections… a play between the artistic materials and the characteristics of the aquatic environment. The palette is often very limited and the use of layers and layers of glazes and opaque veils suggest movement and the life cycle of the natural world. I associate water and the flow of life with its constant, slow passing with tranquility, purity and freedom and it is into there where I dive creatively.