About Cecilia
I am an established professional abstract painter. I live and work in London, where I studied at the Royal College of Art, Chelsea School of Art and The Heatherley School of Fine Art.
Throughout my career I have worked with oils and acrylics on canvas and board. Gouache and mixed media on paper have been very important in my practice all along. I have experimented with perspex, plastic sheeting, silk and collages. For three decades I have exhibited them in the UK and internationally.
Since 2007 I have had a studio at the Chocolate Factory N16 in London. We open our artist studios to the public once or twice a year. These are opportunities to show, sell and get feedback from collectors, friends and fellow artists. They are carefully curated solo exhibitions showing new work every time.
My work has been sold through galleries, agents and directly to clients for many years. Some of the works on my website are for sale. Others are pieces in corporate or private collections that I consider important in my development as a painter.
HISTORY
I currently sit on the selection committee for two annual awards at the Royal College of Art, the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award and the Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship.
1988-90 MA in Painting, Royal College of Art, London
1985-88 BA (Hons) Painting, Chelsea School of Art, London
1984-85 Foundation Course, The Heatherley School of Fine Art, London
1975-80 BA in Philosophy and Literature, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
I was born in Bogotá, Colombia
ABOUT THE WORK
On Canvas
I have used stretched canvas throughout my career. This has been the quintessential support for paintings since the Renaissance in Europe, and it is easy to understand why. It is durable, flexible and versatile. Different kinds and weights of cotton and linen, and different priming techniques make its surface accessible to many different manipulations. Due to its lightness, it is very practical for very large formats. It can be easily transported (un-stretched, in rolls) which is very convenient for my transatlantic travel.
On Paper
I love using paper because of its immediacy. It also has a certain informality which helps particularly at the start of a process. It is also very versatile and can be cut, collaged, mounted onto board, layered. Working on paper is to me a very intimate activity. The first 'secrets' come to me in my work on paper. Unless it is not of a very expensive kind, it will accompany 'the thinking process', and because it is not intimidating, the work carried out on paper can speak from the future. I have found that my works on paper can be ahead of my work in other mediums.
On Board
I started using board (or MDF, as is known in the trade) on a regular basis for a series of 1995 paintings where I also combined it with Perspex (a flexible and transparent sheet of varying widths). I continued using MDF for my show Analogies (1996) because the techniques that I experimented with required a very strong support. It can be heavy and therefore preferable for small scale formats.
In summer 2013 I felt the need to experiment and let the materials dictate a route that I was prepared to follow. I wanted to put materials together in a drawing sense. Tearing colour paper, bits of my own drawings and monoprints and sticking them together on board happened naturally. I was doing collages! Not surprisingly, the stripping down process has resulted in fairly bare images and stark compositions. They are closer to a more geometric phase of mine of the mid 1990s.
SOLO SHOWS
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS