Tapping Into Our Emotions With Gisela A. Lazarte
Meet Gisela A. Lazarte, an artist whose colorful and abstract paintings capture movement and embody freedom. She has an intuitive and highly personal creative process that results in these beautiful, welcoming abstractions of subjects both light and heavy, universal and unique. With a background in film and communication, she finds inspiration in human experience, movement, and sound. Gisela A. Lazarte was born and raised in Venezuela and has been based in New York City since 2016.
What would you like people to know when they first come across your artworks?
That they are expressions of a realm somewhere in between my inner world and interpretations and reactions to the outer world around me. That they capture instants of action that carry much feeling and subconscious memories. That the final pieces attempt to invite you to observe and feel – both from afar and up close, as they all carry a multitude of details which can spark many more feelings and inner connections.
When thinking about where you are in your journey, what are you most excited about and what keeps you inspired for the future?
This past year was incredible for me, both personally and where I am in my artistic journey. The year before that was almost the complete opposite. Looking back on how I felt in 2022, I now feel so lucky and proud for continuing to try and show up, even when the future looked so profoundly uncertain. 2023 was a year of milestones and new connections through my work, along with many personal resolutions and new beginnings. It makes me enormously excited for what could come each year as I keep working and putting myself and my work out there. Embracing uncertainty with an outlook and approach of curiosity and envisioning endless possibilities keeps me inspired for the future.
If you could go to dinner with any artist who would it be and why?
Probably Hilma af Klint or Frida Kahlo — to pick their brains and hear any and all anecdotes from their complex, complicated, and beautiful lives and minds would be a dream (literally, as neither are alive of course). If I had to pick a living artist, David Lynch comes to mind for the same reasons, and for the way he has managed to weave together his multidisciplinary practices.
What is the best piece of advice you've been given?
The first one that jumps to mind immediately wasn’t given to me directly; it’s by another artist, Andy Warhol. I often think about when he said: “Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
What is one thing you wish you'd be asked in an interview?
Honestly, every interview is a wild experience for me, where I’m amazed that people want to dig more into my thoughts, my work and my life. So most questions are still surprising and fresh. If there is one thing, I would say that I always love to learn about particular stories and little details in the lives of other human beings, whether they are artists I admire, or friends or acquaintances. I find those the most interesting. Therefore, I would say questions that dig a little deeper (like these ones) are what I look for when reading about someone. They become a wonderful exercise for me to reflect further on my journey, my practice, and my day-to-day life.
What music are you listening to these days?
I recently visited my parents in Peru since they live there now, and my dad started playing music by Aldemaro Romero. He is a prominent and greatly influential Venezuelan composer and musician that my dad used to listen to all the time in the car when I was younger. While I still listen to many different Venezuelan artists, I hadn’t heard these particular songs in years, probably the entire time I’ve lived abroad. The power music has to bring you back to past lives is amazing. I’ve been playing different albums of Aldemaro Romero’s prolific discography in the studio pretty much every day since.
trinitarias by the pool at dusk, 2022
