From my studio: Mayra Lifich

I was born in Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 1969. I grew up in a middle-class family in which my father worked at his company and my mother painted and took care of raising me and my siblings.

When and why did you start painting?

I started painting when I was very little. I remember that in my free time I'd sit down to paint as part of a game, something that entertained me and made me feel good. I spent long hours enjoying painting and drawing. When I finished secondary school, I hesitated about doing my formal studies at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes because my family's support was lukewarm.

I remember a funny story: before starting at the Escuela de Bellas Artes, I spent a year studying graphic design just to follow my father's advice, since he told me I wasn't going to make any money from art. When I handed in my technical assignments, I remember a teacher told me: “darling, you passed the subject, but your drawings are rather artistic and they don't belong in this degree”. The next day I was enrolling at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, following my convictions and my wishes.

How do you think a gallery and its artists should help each other?

As a complementary relationship through the artwork. I think artworks can't be offered like any other product, the gallerist and the artist should have things in common. The gallerist should be the first one to get excited about the artwork. The artist's first aim isn't selling the artwork but making it. The commercial side is handled by the gallerist, based on those aesthetic affinities they have with the artwork. Respect and trust are the basis of that complementary relationship.

What advice would you give to artists who are starting to show their artwork?

Above all, that they respect themselves, that they don't let themselves be influenced by the prevailing aesthetics or by what fashion imposes. The artwork is born from an inner state and any external command can “contaminate” it. On the other hand, the artwork has to be shown, since it's perfected by the gaze of others.

How did you sell your first artwork? Is there one you feel a stronger connection with?

I sold my first artwork at 20. A friend came to visit my house and, while I was showing her my work, she bought an artwork from me. That was my first sale.

As for the connection with the artworks, rather than one artwork in particular, each of them feels to me like a riddle to be deciphered. The artwork is an active state of tension.

What is art for you? What part does it play in your life? Do you make a living from art?

Art for me is an everyday action, like breathing. Artistic practice has become something vital for me, it's a craft you learn through a certain rigour and then it turns into a daily need. Even if you don't paint all day, the creative process carries on in the doing. I'd say I live for art, but when an artwork of mine sells, it widens my prospects for creating.

What are your sources of inspiration? Do you identify with any other artist?

In my case, I don't consciously have a source of inspiration. The practice itself on the painted surface is what determines its genesis and its conclusion. The artwork goes right through you, you make it but with the awareness that it makes itself, independently of us. An artwork's timing is its own, beyond our needs and our willful gestures.

I feel an affinity with certain practices of abstract expressionism, but I find that the results down that road are different. I don't want the artwork to “close” under the commands of a particular aesthetic painting or a revealing title.

What is it about your creative process that makes it special?

My habit would be my willingness to solve the puzzle the artwork demands of me and to give it all the time and patience it needs to show itself.

Have you had an exhibition recently, what can you tell us? Do you have any project in mind?

My project is to create the least “traumatic” or difficult conditions for my development, personally and as a painter.

Could you recommend us:

An artist: Picasso.

An artwork: El sueño, by Picasso.

A book: Embers by Sándor Márai.

A film: Moulin Rouge.

Thank you very much, Mayra.

We invite you to visit Mayra Lifich's gallery on Artelista.