Today we’d like to introduce you to Isabel Brinck.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
My beginnings in art are an inheritance on my father’s side. My great-grandfather, Axel Brinck, who came from Sweden to Chile in the late 1800s and was a well-known painter in his time. My grandfather, being a doctor, devoted his free time to painting landscapes and my father, a doctor too, adored art in different manifestations and had photography as a hobby.
After doing high school in Chile I became a graphic designer, an applied art. I spent hours on the computer resolving customer orders, and I was doing really well, but I was missing an expression that was more organic and natural. The work became too technical for me, with an infinite amount of resources that technology offers today. That led to me to painting. It was something that was written for me.
At the same time, I was given an opportunity to open a small academy to teach children artistic expression. This greatly motivated the transition to painting for me, as working with children amazed me. I wanted to paint like them, preserving that wonderful innocence thy have to interpret the world they see. I believe this is the most difficult thing an adult can pretend to reach as an artist.
My desire to communicate myself in a gestural, organic, natural fashion led me to make painting my professional, full-time occupation-somewhere around the year 2000.
For personal matters, I moved to Miami in 2003 with my then husband my 4 kids. After my divorce in 2007, my career started growing and growing and led me to what I am now: a dedicated full-time artist, painting and managing my gallery, Rubber Stamp Art Projects, Inc, as a creative director with my business partner and visual artist, Laura Villarreal
Please tell us about your art.
My art is a combination between figurative and abstract. It is a challenge to paint “just as I am” and to play in the depths of emotions, perceptions, sensations and personal experiences as “emptying” from the inside.
I appeal to the innocence of my childhood and immerse myself in the freedom that gives me being a girl again and free myself from the complexity of the adult world for a moment, while I paint.
I like to paint to leave a mark, a testimony of “having been alive.”
My work is predominantly oil based. It is by far my favorite technique, the one I experiment with most. I also dabble in other techniques and materials, but oil definitely takes the cake. I love combining primary colors to get that glowy, vibrant range.
As for my style, I’m a bit of everything. Abstract, surrealist, expressionist, dreamlike… the list goes on. I pride myself in what I call a “special stamp” in my work. My palette of colors, my forms- they all represent a style that I feel like is uniquely mine. It’s cheerful, it’s expressive, it’s unique, but it’s also honest, coherent, and balanced. I want to give people a peek into my cute, crazy life.
Within the puzzle of my graphics, there are elements relating to concepts such as love, passion, and the complexities of relationships. I try to capture the loneliness, the sexuality, the disappointments, the illusions, the intimacy, the differences between the sexes. It’s all there in that giant puzzle of mine. I try to invoke nature, and also make fun of humans a bit. I gather simple ideas and make them complex.
The world I show in my work is a world of fantasy. A world that shows those little girls wanting to be grown ups, and those adults longing for the sweet, innocent bliss of childhood again- even if for a brief moment. I am fascinated by contrasting two complete opposites, for example: the childish and the sexual. I like to create a complex, moving atmosphere that mirrors life itself. I paint environments in which you can enter, travel, and discover new things again and again.
I realized that for me, art allows me to invent another world. A world that is just mine, and I can use my own experiences in life to shape that world. Pablo Picasso, one of my biggest inspirations, once said: “painting is another way of keeping a daily life.”
Anyone that will appreciate my work and feel some kind of emotion from it is welcome to do so. I strive to achieve an awareness of the internal channels of the viewers. I want them to feel their emotions running wild. I want them to enter the dream world that I enter when I am painting. I hope that others will hear the voice of my colors and the language of my forms. Perhaps some will, and some will not. Perhaps some will see it as just another decoration. If I can manage to inspire just one other human being through my work, I am satisfied.
I understand that our diverse society is this crazy melting pot of people from a huge range of backgrounds, so not everyone will have the same take on my paintings. I paint what I feel and not what I want others to feel. If I can achieve a dialogue with the viewer, I will be content, but the main dialogue I intend to achieve is with myself.
We often hear from artists that being an artist can be lonely. Any advice for those looking to connect with other artists?
We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. We just find some companions sometimes throughout our lives that make us feel “not alone” for a while, but in the very inside, we are all alone, especially artists, because we have a little “me” inside that talk to us all day about everything but can’t communicate with anybody else than us. The best way, in my opinion, is losing fear for loneliness and start enjoying it. That is the place to discover the best of our creativity and expression.
Connecting with other artists is easy but it doesn’t mean you’ll stop feeling the loneliness. I think we just need to find the balance that is good for us. There is not a rule or “one way” of doing things here. I have my own way and I like feeling involved and sharing with others, but also sometimes I enjoy and need the space of loneliness only with my “little me”.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I am constantly looking for good opportunities to exhibit my art in different galleries and art fairs.
Every year I participate in one of the important fairs during Art Basel Miami (Pinta Miami, Scope Miami).
I also do art fairs outside the US, like Chaco, Chile. I’m thinking about expanding to an Asian market like Dubai or Beijing. My work is offered online in Saatchi art and Artsy (this last one is represented by Fine Art Maya (San Diego, California) I am also represented by Chase Edwards Gallery , New York. My studio does open studios about 3 times a year and anyone can contact me to visit by appointment. I do a lot of social media (Facebook, Instagram) and I send monthly newsletters with my last creations to my list of contacts via email. Anyone can subscribe to that.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2635 NW 20 St Miami FL. 33156
- Website: www.isabelbrinck.com
- Phone: +17864264576
- Email: isabel@isabelbrinck.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabel_brinck_art/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isabelbrinck.art
Image Credit:
Gonzalo Romero
Francisca Miranda
Sonya Revell
Sebastian Sepulveda
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