BIOGRAPHY

Yaiza is a N.J. based artist from Spain. She has a BFA/MFA from the University of Barcelona. Her work focusses on portraiture and maternity.

STATEMENT

My work is a reflection of my personal journey as a woman, a mother, and an artist. Through my portraits, I aim to capture the tenderness and transformation that define the experience of motherhood and childhood, those fleeting moments that change us both in a subtle and profound way. 

Becoming a mother transformed me not only as a person but also as an artist. I am originally from Spain and having to move to the U.S. almost 11 years ago forced me to put my artist practice on hold and focus on adjusting and starting a new life for a long period of time. My motherhood experience connected me with my need to create and to leave a graphic memory of my experience. Painting and drawing allows me to stretch an instant into hours. Some of these pieces took more than twenty hours of work to complete. I got to relish one moment for hours and take it all in, even details that passed unregistered initially. I work from the deep changes that motherhood  involves, and that continue to reshape the mother’s world and the artist’s perspective and approach to their practice. With my work, I hope to transmit some of my personal experience as well as the intimacy of these tender moments.

I work in different mediums such as graphite, soft pastels, acrylic, and digital drawings. The mediums and sizes of my pieces are directly related to my personal experience as a mother. I started working on some of my pieces with my baby on my lap and that meant that I had to work on smaller surfaces. As my son grew older the sizes have also grown with him. The softness of the pastels, the energy of the mark making, and the increase of the sizes of the pieces as my own son grows up speak about both the tenderness and the transformation of my work process.

Overall I believe my work will speak to all parents, it is a universal feeling that time passes too fast when you have children and the feeling of wanting to stop time to be able to hold them just for a little bit longer. I always think about the experience of being a parent as a continuous joy and grief. The joy of seeing them grown up and getting to know their amazing personalities is sometimes a bit of a grief, missing their previous version at the same time that you love the new one.