Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Pretto Vargas.
Hi Laura, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
My name is Laura Pretto Vargas, 29 years old. I’m an Italo-Brazilian artist living in Miami. I attended Istituto Marangoni Milano for a Fashion Design intensive program and Fine Arts at Accademia di Belli Arti di Brera. I also worked as an apprentice at Atelier Lou Borghetti (Porto Alegre – Brazil) to refine my studies and practice. Beginning of my education as a fashion designer I realized the fashion industry was not the correct setting to explore my creative impulses, and then I decided to pursue a painting career. I fell in love with art when I was very young. Many years later, it is still what gives me strength when pursuing my artistic career.
My background has always been very influential in my art; since my parents are Brazilian and Italian, they naturally influenced me. However, as I got older, living on two different continents, Miami (in America) and Milan (in Europe), made me realize that certain characteristics of people from each part of the world stood out to me. This has caused me to incorporate these cultural influences into my art.
My paintings are gestural and aesthetically similar to artworks from the Abstract Expressionist movement, the canvases are filled with highly textural brush marks and color application. As a lover of art and history, my work gains inspiration from it and in a variety of styles. My inspiration also comes from nature and my inner feelings. I paint abstract and abstract figurative works with mainly acrylic and oil paints but I experience and have an appreciation for additional mediums.
My process is very intuitive, not systematic. When an idea hits me, I run with it. For me, the whole art creation process is very emotional, so everything flows naturally without thinking about things too much. Once an idea has been created, every brushstroke becomes a moment of self-reflection, leading to even more new ideas emerging from that original one.
For me, painting has always been an outlet to express how I feel and my emotion. It’s not about what I see or thinks people want to see, but about what I feel and how that emotion shapes my artwork. My paintings are expressions of my imagination and memories. The subjects are often distorted, exaggerated, or sometimes completely abandoned or abstracted to convey my inner feelings or ideas. This may be seen as chaotic by some, but it’s actually very structured.
Art for me is a way to communicate through the materials, techniques, and forms I use, my ideas, and what I feel to my viewer, as well as challenge, provoke and instigate in the viewer ideas and feelings of their own.
I think art is a movement of self-expression that changes as you grow and learn, on your terms. Art is forever! A piece of art is a forever statement your soul makes, that desires to share with the rest of the world.
My artistic language seeks to express feelings of vulnerability, happiness, energy, sexuality, and so on. My abstract works express shared human emotions and are made to connect with my own and others’ specific emotional life experiences, providing a space for connection and reflection. In my opinion, art has the power to play with our emotions and make us lose ourselves in it. My work aims to open your mind and make the viewer feel/ experience something different.
Art is a language in itself, a way to communicate with people from all over. In my work, I try to express something beyond objective reality. An internal sensation always drives me to do what I love most: create new worlds. In essence, my work is an inner narration told through my paintings.
My goal as an artist is to convey a message, a feeling through my art. So you don’t need to understand all of what you see, but instead, feel something from it. So my goal is to reach as many people as possible with my work so that they can be impacted in some way by its message.
I hope you enjoy my art as much as I enjoyed creating it. Visit my website and social media to learn and see more of my art, or feel free to contact me.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I’ve learned that in my art I am always evolving and finding new ways and approaches to open up myself through my artworks, after all, it’s a self-discovering and healing process for me, and captivate the viewer’s attention and curiosity without losing my own sense of style and identity. So for me, the process of artwork is healing and painful at the same time. I have also been diagnosed with fibromyalgia so sometimes the physical process of making the artwork is exhausting for me, it demands a lot of my energy.
Also one of my challenges is being a young Latino woman in this field of work, the art industry is massively controlled by men in many aspects.
Some facts:
-Of the 3,050 galleries in the Artsy database, 10% represent not a single woman artist, while only 8% represent more women than men. Almost half represent 25% or fewer women;
-The NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) found that as women artists age, they earn progressively less than their male artist counterparts. Women artists aged 55–64 earn only 66¢ for each $1 earned by men;
-Only 13.7% of living artists represented by galleries in Europe and North America are women;
-There are no women in the top 0.03% of the auction market, where 41% of the profit is concentrated. Overall, 96% of artworks sold at auction are by male artists;
-Women still occupy fewer directorships at museums with budgets over $15 million, holding 30% of art museum director positions and earning 75¢ for every dollar earned by male directors;
-The most expensive work sold by a woman artist at auction was Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932), sold in 2014 for $44.4 million—more than $400 million less than the auction record for a male artist: Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, sold in 2017 for $450.3 million;
-Just 24% of the 27,000 artists shown at art fairs in 2018 were women. Art fair sales that year totaled $16.5 billion;
-Just 11% of all acquisitions and 14% of exhibitions at 26 prominent U.S. museums over the past decade were of work by female artists;
-At the Art Basel fairs (Basel, Miami, and Hong Kong), women made up less than a quarter of the artists on view over the past four years;
-5% of artworks on major museum walls in the U.S. are by women artists;
-More than $196.6 billion has been spent on art at auction between 2008 and the first half of 2019. Of this, work made by women accounts for just $4 billion—around 2 percent;
-27% women artists, out of 590 at 70 institutions over 6 years;
-2 women made the list of “100 most expensive artists of all time’’;
-81,4% of these women are white, 6,6% Asian, 4,6% black, and only 3,6% Latino;
So imagine being a young Latino woman painter, besides the gendered barriers, it’s still a difficult road. The world needs more of women’s perspective, the artistic messengers are mostly males, and of this male mostly white, receivers get a one-sided viewpoint into our world. By promoting women artists, the impact of the female perspective will trickle down to all people, and possibly create a more balanced future.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m an Italo-Brazilian artist living in Miami.
My paintings are gestural and aesthetically similar to artworks from the Abstract Expressionist movement, the canvases are filled with highly textural brush marks and color application. As a lover of art and history, my work gains inspiration from it and in a variety of styles. My inspiration also comes from nature and my inner feelings. I paint abstract and abstract figurative works with mainly acrylic and oil paints but I experience and have an appreciation for additional mediums.
My process is very intuitive, not systematic. When an idea hits me, I run with it. For me, the whole art creation process is very emotional, so everything flows naturally without thinking about things too much. Once an idea has been created, every brushstroke becomes a moment of self-reflection, leading to even more new ideas emerging from that original one.
For me, painting has always been an outlet to express how I feel and my emotion. It’s not about what I see or thinks people want to see, but about what I feel and how that emotion shapes my artwork. My paintings are expressions of my imagination and memories. The subjects are often distorted, exaggerated, or sometimes completely abandoned or abstracted to convey my inner feelings or ideas. This may be seen as chaotic by some, but it’s actually very structured.
Art for me is a way to communicate through the materials, techniques, and forms I use, my ideas, and what I feel to my viewer, as well as challenge, provoke and instigate in the viewer ideas and feelings of their own.
My artistic language seeks to express feelings of vulnerability, happiness, energy, sexuality, and so on. My abstract works express shared human emotions and are made to connect with my own and others’ specific emotional life experiences, providing a space for connection and reflection. In my opinion, art has the power to play with our emotions and make us lose ourselves in it. My work aims to open your mind and make the viewer feel/ experience something different.
Art is a language in itself, a way to communicate with people from all over. In my work, I try to express something beyond objective reality. An internal sensation always drives me to do what I love most: create new worlds. In essence, my work is an inner narration told through my paintings.
My goal as an artist is to convey a message, a feeling through my art. So you don’t need to understand all of what you see, but instead, feel something from it. So my goal is to reach as many people as possible with my work so that they can be impacted in some way by its message.
The process of creating my artwork: First thing I start with some form of music, instrumental or acoustic, to loosen myself, the process of creating a painting sometimes happens just on my mind, other times I like to do a drawing to loosen up, then I like to pick colors, at least the main ones and it all goes from there. I like to think of the process of painting as a slow dance or encounter I have between the brush or whatever I’m using at that moment, the canvas, and myself. That field is sacred, as long as the connection is happening as if I’m in a complete trance.
My favorite part of the creative process: The fun of always feeling like a child at the beginning of each new project, my creative process is an auto-discovery and healing moment and a play all at the same time.
My own life experiences, being a young Latino woman, have lived and traveled to many countries and I guess my own way of viewing the world. Art is an experience, so each person will interact and absorb it differently, and that’s the beauty of it.
The most important element in my artwork: Soul and mindfulness.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
I use instagram to share my day-to-day experiences and my work, and also to connect with my followers, galleries, art collectors, etc. YouTube I use every day to see videos of art-related stuff, news, documentaries, interviews, etc.
Netflix for movies and series.
Some of my favorite books are, The prince – by Niccolò Machiavelli, Art of war – by Sun Tzu, The Picture of Dorian Gray – by Oscar Wilde, The Tale of the Unknown Island – by Jose Saramago, Othello – by William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream – William Shakespeare, Romeo, and Juliet – William Shakespeare, One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert, Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov, The Borgias – Mario Puzo, The bad girl – Mario Vargas Llosa, etc.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lauraprettovargas.com/
- Instagram: @lauraprettovargas
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LPrettoVargas
- Youtube: @LauraVargas1005
