Bernadette Despujols
Bernadette Despujols lives and works between Miami and New York. She’s presented solo exhibitions with her galleries Rachel Uffner Gallery (NYC), Nino Mier Gallery (LA) and Spinello Projects (Miami), as well as recently with Green Family Art Foundation (Dallas).
Bernadette Despujols’ painting ”Rafael y Sigfredo” makes part of the museum collection. We checked in with the artist to learn more.
Q: What might we know about the people featured in your paintings?
B.D: Rafael Rangel and Sigfredo Chacón for instance are fellow colleagues and friends from Venezuela, who also migrated to the US. I met them in Miami. Sigfredo was a very big influence on me, his studio was close to mine in downtown Miami for a while, and we would have long conversations on art. He was one of the first persons who encouraged me to keep painting and to work further on my portraits.
Q: You both studied and taught architecture; do you see an overlap with your art-making one way or another?
B.D: There are many ways the two intersect and overlap. Studying architecture definitely taught me discipline. To begin and finish a project, even when you are not so happy with it during the process. Discipline is very important for artists, especially when one has no upcoming shows or deadlines, or a clear idea of where is your work is heading.
I see both architecture and painting or art making as translation processes. Whether it’s translating needs, programs or ideas into spaces or, for painting; translating a reality seen trough your eyes to a new reality on the canvas, where parts of this "reality" gets lost in this translation, transformed or reinvented.
In my paintings I mix these two realities; figures entangled with backrooms, and there is plenty of room for "mistakes". Fences overlap, floor perspectives rotate, furniture breaks, fingers become just lines...a playfulness that enjoys the plasticity of painting as well as the plasticity of figuration.
Bernadette Despujols
”Rafael y Sigfredo”, 2022
Oil on canvas
152,4 x 121,9 cm
Artwork acquired from Spinello Projects (Miami)
