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What inspired you to create art and become an artist (events, feelings, experiences...)?
I don't when I started drawing, but at school I used to do it when I was bored in class filling sheets of paper with drawings. I still have some drawings from my childhood because my mother realized that I liked it so much that she started to buy me crayons and watercolors.
It was always clear to me that my path would go that way and I started to paint my first oil paintings from the day the Three Wise Men brought me a suitcase full of paints with an easel and a canvas when I was a little girl.
I was so interested that I that since my childhood, I spent hours looking through the encyclopedia of Art History that I had at home. That's when I started to be amazed looking at the color plates of the paintings of the great masters of the Renaissance, the Baroque, or the Impressionists. I still couldn't get my head around "modern" painting, the avant-garde, Picasso, Tapies...
What is your artistic training, the techniques and themes with which you have experimented so far?
When I entered the University of Fine Arts I felt complete. For me it was a very important experience, despite the opposition of my father who was an engineer and wanted his children to study technical careers. He was very upset, claiming that I would have no future.
I started very excited because I knew that the world of artistic creation was what I wanted and in college I that we did a lot of practice drawing from natural models, there I started to handle charcoal, watercolors, tempera, tempera paint, oil painting, etc. But most of the production of canvases at that time I made them with acrylic. He practiced everything, volume with sculpture, photography, collage, inks,...,
Painting is the specialty I choose because it allows me to express what I feel on a two-dimensional surface in a very free way where I recreate everything I want expressing fictitious realities in which perspective, atmosphere, tone or volume appear within the most academic technique, that will be the basis for my later evolution.
I practice a lot in large format developing a loose and expressive painting giving free rein to my emotions. These are moments of great energy and euphoria in which, observing the work of my classmates or the indications of my teachers, I get a lot of information and resources that together with my visits to museums and exhibitions enrich me and I begin to make my first series.
It is a realistic painting with which I feel very comfortable despite the influences of expressionism very fashionable among my classmates and teachers.
It was a collection of portraits with a lot of freshness and loose strokes. I was very interested in the human figure. Then I made the series Ambientes (Environments) where I worked the interiors, combining furniture with vegetation. They are very colorful realistic works that express the mystery of loneliness, they are empty rooms. Afterwards, the series Tropicalia, in which dreamlike jungle worlds appear, vegetation, abundance of greenery and parrots, many parrots. There is almost nothing left of those series, they were very prolific periods and fortunately, with sales success.
What are the 3 aspects that differentiate you from other artists, making your work unique?
The first one could be that the collection of data and information from seeing so much painting during my life in peers, exhibitions, museums, fairs, and networks. Museums, fairs, and networks...makes me start a clear evolution in the way I apply color and approach new subjects. This evolution can be appreciated from my first works to the current ones. For me, it is essential that there is a process in the artist's work, although there are artists who paint in the same way and even the same subject all their lives.
I believe that there is a style of brushstroke and themes that are more and more personal.
The second may be that I stay true to my ideas by making a very personal figuration with nature as the basis of inspiration and the combination of inert elements with living elements. My models are people from my environment that I photograph. There is a very clear idea of color, capturing it in its fullness, bright, saturated and very expressive. I also need to highlight contrast, light sources that can come from any angle but are always there.
And thirdly, the way I approach my compositions. I always start with many ideas, and then I filter them. When I build a scene I try out the elements that I am going to incorporate or those that I am going to eliminate, before I used to make my sketches on the canvas itself (Velázquez also did it), now I also use a program to visualize my ideas. But there will be more changes because the restlessness of constant search, makes me lean towards many ideas, I can touch the human figure, vegetation, landscape. Everyday elements, anything.
Where does your inspiration come from?
It's an inner feeling. Every day I look at the things that surround me, the things that contemporary artists do, the landscape of my city, the people, the light... The grandeur that Nature offers, which the classics ired so much.
Rousseau said "There is a book open to all eyes: Nature".
What is your artistic approach? What visions, sensations or feelings do you want to evoke in the viewer?
The moment in which I am immersed now preserves the essence of my usual way of painting. But there has been a process that I consider important because if you don't evolve you don't live the creative experience nor the discoveries of other truths that are inside you.
The way of producing and creating is based on the collection of a lot of information about things that interest me. With the graphic material including my own photographic work, I make compositions in which I introduce living or inert elements, but each series or project focuses on a specific theme. This is focused depending on the state of mind, adversities make me sharpen my wits and I have gone through good times and not so good times.
When I do a job I am tormented by the thought of not reaching the expectations I have in mind, or when I see that things are going badly, it is a great disappointment. It is not always enjoyable.
I would like whoever visualizes my paintings to stop and observe. The painting, in order to be successful, must look at the viewer and not the other way around. The work I've been doing these years evokes nostalgia, freshness and a certain air of romanticism, this is very clear in my series: Solitudes.
What is the process of creation of your works? Spontaneous or with a long preparatory process (technical, inspiration from the classics of art or others)?
Starting from the collection of images that I keep in my thematic folders, I prepare the process. I usually take color photocopies and paste them on the wall, and I try them out. On the canvas I make the sketches, as well as the changes and I build my composition. I draw with graphite or charcoal the figures or the elements and I start the first stain, which is usually very diluted to favor the changes that may arise. There is also spontaneity, especially in details.
Do you use any particular working technique? If so, can you explain it?
First I give a diluted layer on the surface of the canvas with some bright color, almost always red. I do this with acrylic paint. It can go over the drawing or under the drawing.
Then I add layers and cover spaces. Sometimes the paint drips to give freshness and sometimes there is more impasto. I also apply glazes in the areas where I want to change the chromatism a little.
Finally I resolve with strong, powerful colors, and sometimes the figures merge with the backgrounds, giving plasticity to the whole. There is always light, it is important to give liveliness and effectiveness to the composition.
Are there innovative aspects in your work? Can you tell us which ones?
Everything has been invented. In the thirty thousand years that man has been painting since the discovery of prehistoric creations, he has had time to do everything, I do not see big changes since the beginning of the digital era. There was much more rupture and innovation at the end of the IX and XX century with the avant-garde and the different styles that have transcended in history for being innovative and changing.
Now I use a program, as I mentioned before, which is very useful to create compositions including the elements or images that I select from my folders. I don't do digital painting, but I can visualize with the program some color proofs.
I like to do everything manually, as an irer of Art I don't like the painting that is applied on a photo plotted on a canvas and neither the works made with Artificial intelligence that are beginning to sneak into the contests. More than Artists in that field, there are engineers. Nor the Art that is made as "in series", repetitive and anodyne works with little technique. The Art that transcends I don't think it is that one, although nowadays the market favors those things.
Nor do I like a kind of current that I observe that is booming, and is the "easy" way to create, such as throwing streams of paint on the canvas and make movements on it to expand the paint or use plates and stencils and apply color. I like to draw and paint, and the works of other artists I also prefer that they are made with some skill, the talent can only be appreciated in that which has an elaboration with a technique and creative aesthetics that is a little worked regardless of the style of the artist.
Rothko, when he made his multiform paintings, large fields of color, gives the sensation of being something too simple. I am fascinated by this series because it has a very elaborate elaboration, they are compositions in which he expresses his emotions, he does not paint simple rectangles. Now if there are artists who do it covering fields of color without more, it is a simplistic painting. But styles are cyclical over time.
I think it is more difficult to work well with abstraction than with figuration or realism.
My painting could be framed in the New Figuration.
Do you have any format or medium with which you feel more comfortable? If so, why?
I feel more comfortable working in large format. I have been making large paintings for many years, I organize myself better with the space and I think my message is better transmitted. But I work in all formats.
And my favorite medium is oil without any doubt because it allows me to make corrections and blurring, it has more plasticity and gives me the opportunity to create an expressive language.
Where do you produce your works? At home, in a shared studio or in your own studio? And in this space, how do you organize your creative work?
At home. My house is big and I have a space set up for painting.
Where I enjoy painting is in my summer house, there is a natural light that I like more than the artificial one.
I use large MDF boards as palettes because with oil paints the palette takes a long time to dry.
Does your work take you to travel to meet new collectors, for fairs or exhibitions? If so, what does it bring you?
I've always traveled a lot, but for years I've only moved around Spain.
In my city (Bilbao), there is a good exhibition offer, we have the Guggenheim with good contemporary temporary exhibitions and the Museum of Fine Arts, which also has many exhibitions of artists of all times.
I go to Madrid every year in February to see the art fairs.
Seeing art brings a lot, sometimes you notice a detail in a painting and you retain it, it's enriching.
How do you imagine the evolution of your work and your career as an artist in the future?
I think I like painting more and more. But I demand more and more of myself and this involves a mental effort and I think I get too involved.
I have projects for the future. I think I will do new things and new processes. I would like to have access to interesting exhibitions. I have never paid to rent spaces. But I do not criticize this practice, you have to give options to people who paint and it is difficult to find spaces because now there are very few Galleries and they have many expenses in addition to the sword of the Internet . Online exhibitions or Art Platforms take away a lot of sales space.
What is the theme, style or technique of your latest artistic production?
I am currently working on the Paraísos series. They are idyllic universes where peace reigns and dreams can spread. There is a lot of color, vegetation, invented landscapes and many birds.
For now it will not be released or for sale, but later I will talk about it or bring it to light.
At the same time I am still working on the series Anónimas, which is one of the most extensive collections I am making. In this series I speak of a femininity treated from simplicity, they are heroines of everyday life, I highlight situations in which transcendence is precisely the function of being or being. It is important the message that these girls-women stand out in irrelevant situations and shine by themselves.
Can you tell us about your most important exhibition experience?
The most important exhibition experience I think is yet to come.
I was thrilled to receive an invitation from an Art Gallery in Dubai to exhibit my work.
More and more people are encouraged to buy works of art on the Internet. There are real jewels, paintings that you fall in love with. The market is more global.
But I will never forget my first exhibition back in the 90's in the exhibition hall of the village where I went every summer. It was a series of landscapes made from a series of photographs I took in the area.
It was an endearing experience.
If you could have created a famous work in the history of art, which one would you choose? And why?
Monet's s of water lilies in his house in Giberny.
They recreate his particular universe in a delicate way with a very harmonious chromatism without perspective and vaporization of the contours. They reflect Monet's experience with nature. There is a fine line between realism and abstraction in these works that I think the painter solves with great mastery.
David Hockney marked me a lot and inspired me when I did my first series of portraits with acrylics. His pool and garden paintings that he did in California fascinated me and his last portraits that I was able to see at the Guggenheim in Bilbao seemed very colorful and expressive. I definitely love his style and his evolution.
I have also seen a lot of Sorolla's work. The master of light.
If you could invite a famous artist (living or dead) to dinner, who would it be? How would you suggest they spend the evening?
I would be very happy to chat with Antonio López. The Spanish painter of Madrid landscapes. I like his early and late work. He has an incredible sense of space and a very good ability to work. It is logical that he is so sought after because his creative work has been and is very valuable.
I would also like to invite the Chilean painter Guillermo Lorca. He makes very baroque compositions with an incredible technical skill and a very powerful creative potential.
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli 
