10 Questions with Nadra Jacob

Nadra Jacob is a visual artist, born in Santiago of Chile in 1970 and graduated in art studies with a General Mention from the  Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. 
When she was little, she had the opportunity to live with the beauty of things, and she was able to dialogue with the taste for aesthetics, designs, and color, in her family's textile company. 
For 23 years, she has been formally dedicated to art. She specialized in painting through different media: oil, acrylic, watercolor, Chinese ink, and pastel, among others. 
Since 2006 she has participated in various group exhibitions, workshops, fairs, and international calls in countries like the United States, Hong Kong, Dubai, Argentina, and the United Kingdom.

www.nadrajacob.com | @nadra_jacob

ARTIST STATEMENT

Her artistic work is based on the representation, through painting, of a series of environments, landscapes, and elements located both in the internal and external imaginary. From the above, a synergy between both worlds is developed that allows her to create images that, in addition to stressing the real and the fictional, move between the figurative and the abstraction through the use of a wide color range.

INTERVIEW

First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. What is your artistic background, and how did you become an artist? 

I am a visual artist from Santiago de Chile. I graduated in art studies with a General mention from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. However, despite my constant studies, I consider myself a self-taught artist.
When I was young, I had the opportunity to live with the beauty of things, and I was able to dialogue with the taste for aesthetics, designs, and color, in my family textile company.
For 23 years, I have formally dedicated myself to art. I specialize in painting through different media: oil, acrylic, watercolor, Chinese ink, pastel, among others.
Since 2006 I have participated in various group exhibitions, workshops, fairs, and international calls in countries like the United States, Dubai, Sweden, Hong Kong, Argentina, and the United Kingdom.

What is your aim as an artist?

I would like my art not to be indifferent to anyone. On the contrary, I hope with my work to enrich that of others and to learn from my colleagues. I hope that my works have a positive and quality impact, that one day will inspire others, promote optimism, and bring art to the community. The training that I have acquired during these years added to my interest in continuously training myself, looking for new scenarios and new inspirations. These are necessary for the creativity of an artist, just like the continuous training, improvement, and learning from others.

You use a wide range of colors in your work, and they all seem to have a specific meaning to you and your production. How do you choose your colors, and what do they represent? 

Yes, I am constantly experimenting with color and its synthesis. It is a key element in my painting. I am very interested in the encounter between the material, chromatic and gestural aspects of pictorial language.
For me, color is strength, freedom, and I see no limits when I incorporate color in my works. As humans, we are visual creatures, and color greatly influences decision-making because each color elicits a different emotional reaction. Sometimes I apply the color intuitively, and sometimes not so much. It will depend on the meaning I want to convey.

Your paintings mix dreamy landscapes and geometric forms. How did you come up with this style, and how would you define it?

My artistic work is based on the representation, through painting, of a series of environments, landscapes, and elements located in both the internal and external imaginary.
From the above, a synergy develops between both worlds that allows me to create images that, in addition to accentuating the real and the fictitious, move between the figurative and the abstraction through the use of a wide chromatic range.

How important are spontaneous actions for your work? Do you meticulously plan every work, or do you let shapes come alive by random interventions?

My research projects sometimes start out intuitively, where my work is inserted into the search for color, and from that place, my painting is created spontaneously, and the work is built from daily experience. These works are characterized by the use of a strong color palette, the use of numerical codes. The divine, the real, and the abstract appear in my paintings with associations of shapes and colors that are often improvised, mainly using painting as a method to create my works.
Other times, my work is about something I want to tell and about all the story and narrative that exists behind what I am creating.

Why do you use this visual language? And where did you get your imagery from?

I feel that with painting, I give myself the freedom that I don't normally give myself in my daily life. I have no limits, and I have no structure. Art allows me to express myself freely; I simply let myself go and explore my creativity. The images are sometimes spontaneous and appear when I combine colors, and other times, it is a research process on a particular topic that interests me and in which I want to delve and work.

Where do you find inspiration for your work?

The color inspires me, of course, and many things occur to me when I work with it, especially everyday things (landscapes, a chair, a cat ...). Then there are numbers, which I have been studying for many years. I consider them a very beautiful ancestral philosophy, where everything fits because they have the exact coordinates to tell us what we should do, where we should go, and much more. That is what I began to capture in my most recent works; the images that often cross my path during a trip, a meeting, or when visiting an exhibition. Finally, my inner imagination and the mystical are sources of great inspiration.

What advice can you give to beginning artists?

Paint, paint, every day!

You have exhibited extensively in many different countries. What do you think of the surge of digital exhibitions? Do you see them more as an opportunity or a threat? 

Online sales are attracting more and more attention. Thanks to greater flexibility and lower operating costs, online trading platforms (which focus primarily on medium and low prices) are becoming more popular in the art market. At the same time, online sales reach more potential collectors, creating more opportunities to offer services such as online ratings or data analysis. Additionally, 5, AI, IoT technology will revolutionize and further deepen this revolution.
This increased information will encourage transparency in pricing information, attracting new collectors to the market. There will be more access to works that previously had a waiting list because there is less demand or less expense today. Society must change, some paradigms will fall. However, we must understand that we are facing a change of era and not an era of change.

Finally, what are your plans for the rest of 2021 and the future in general? 

This year despite the difficulties caused by Covid-19, I have a pretty tight schedule. Some of the most important events I am participating in are The London Biennale, which took place in July, in August the Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong, while in October, I will take part in the Art Expo New York, among others.