The artist travels to Rio Bueno to begin her work. There she has a limited amount space, between two rapids. “My journey takes me as long as the river needs. I must commit to the cycle of nature, if not I get left out of it,” she says. Her last and rigorous painting -which also has much technique and theory- opens on Tuesday.

By CECILIA VALDÉS URRUTIA

Those peaceful and aesthetic waters that Patricia Claro paints convey a special stillness. However, they have very little of simple. More like nothing. The artist resorts to even a physics doctor, Maltrana Diego, to work on formulas and mathematical drawings to support her work and technique. And she has the company of, Olga Giménez, Bachelor in Arts and Literature, for her theoretical base; along with immersing herself in dozens of books. Today she is captivated by the Taoist aesthetics. “The concept of emptiness builds up my project. Taoism understands water as the great void,” she says referring to the work in her studio.

Because her job in the field is all the more intense. She travels to her “stage” in Rio Bueno, very near its birth -always the same one, for seven years- and camps or stays in a small cabin. She stays there for days and hours, non stop, observing and capturing the course of the river in digital images and its surroundings. “My journey takes me as long as the river needs. It’s exhausting. I immerse myself in it, because I have to also be a bit of water in order to perceive the image, its rhythm, its lights. If I don’t adapt to this cycle and their times, I get left out,”, she adds.

She just translated her work of one year into eight large format paintings and a piece of video art of her part of the river. “It has meant a minute by minute delivery” she says, and just seeing her huge studio surrounded by models, puzzles over site plans, drawings, paintings, physics formulas, etc is enough. Her new works -which surpass the old simple realism- will inaugurate on Tuesday, in Galería Animal, in what will be the last exhibition before the closing of this space.

Patricia Claro (graduate in visual arts and in design from Pontificia Universidad Católica) has already been visited by collectors interested in her new paintings. Other works will have to be reserved for the exhibition to which has been invited to by curator Selene Wendt, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo in 2012. She has also participated in the II Bienial el Fin del Mundo, selected by the renowned German expert and former director of the Biennale of Sao Paulo, Alfons Hug; among other honors.

Her artistic obsession:

-What does this insistence on the water theme imply?

“Being attached to the theme of water is transformed into a process with images in constant change. Because everything starts from the process of change that the river offers me. There is a model that vanishes: images that appear in each fraction of a second and deform the environment for me at the same time. It offers me images for a theoretical and practical study.”

-What are you looking for?

“To paint a distorted landscape that is water, that cannot paint itself. It is transparent, has no form, but adopts its surrounding.”

-Its scenario, to what extent does it determine it?

“It has always been the same place, even with a same branch, that I’ve been following its evolution and changes. I have the space enclosed and I know every corner. This scenario, though, had to meet certain characteristics: it is fresh water. It is lighter than seawater and by being so clear the real colors that surround it aren’t modified. It has a closed environment and stable movement. I am able to capture the moment with a camera, if not I wouldn’t be able to paint it. I need to shoot over a thousand images during the journey. It is so fleeting that I cannot miss an instant.”

-The element of time is now a central point.

“Yes. I focused on the time factor for these works. I have witnessed the changes of river flow. The protagonist is the journey, keep up with nature’s rhythm. I steal one instant from the river, from nature, and I keep work on it at the studio. There is no work without the river. And my inspiration lies in the patience to wait for the luminous effect.”

-How does your work begin?

“It starts by throwing a stone into the water until it becomes calm again. I manipulate and work the equivalent of eight seconds time, but I take to paint the luminosity of a full day, from a maximum light to sunset light. Light is what defines me and redefines the image. I draw the outline that the light paints me. The outline of water that is distorted. I am interested in that distortion. The abstraction of that distortion, which is also attached to the photographic model. What I try to do is another water that comes from my mind.”

“I leave the perfectly aesthetic images aside”

-You make actual mountings with mini photographs that you place over a floor plan of your space in Rio Bueno?

“It is a very slow work. It is about reaching a personal technique, that starts with the selection of the photographs. Only 8. That show a sequence. I leave aside the images that were perfectly aesthetic to be painted: they were not framed in this search of movement that water has.”

-Do you deconstruct the image?

“I try to be faithful to the water, but I separate the reflected light from the refracted light… And through a mask I paint both. The patience in my technique relates a lot to the oriental, thats where the chiseled cutouts papers from the Chinese come from. Because I build a puzzle that represents each one of the fragments of image and light, and with a special clip I then separate the images that correspond to different lights; I separate the lights and shadows. But in doing so I lose the color reference. That’s where the reconstruction of the color comes in. This means, I make two frames: the shadows and on the other the lights. Light draws me”.

-The color that you work is very limited: blue, white, green. Do you limit only to the real?

“I keep the colors of the environment. But in the forest and the sky I give myself certain freedoms. The coming stage will have further experimentation with a more monochrome painting, like this one that I titled “06/18/23”, which corresponds to the exact day that I captured the image. “

From Leonardo to Chuck Close

-What artists are your influences?

“My relationship is with those who work their own technique. I’m interested in Vija Celmins, Mark Tansey, Paul Noble, Chuck Close. And certainly Richter: he does it with a very detailed color manipulation technique.”

-And on the national scene, who stands out?

“The work that Emma Milg does is very delicate and ethereal. She does it with paper. I’m very interested in the color strength that Paul Chiuminatto has. He is very studious.”

-In your obsession with the theme of water, is there anyone who has served as a source?

“More than the issue of water, there are landscapers that interest me. Monet with his observation of the pond, romantics like Friedrich. But it was Leonardo the first one in the West who had a more Taoist view of nature.”

-Your minimalist aesthetic relates to the East.

“I’m rereading on Chinese landscapes. I’m interested in that minimalist aesthetic I begin to see in those ideograms in these paintings. They are more mental landscapes. And the concept of emptyness builds my job. I found it in a Taoist text; water as the great void.”

-But in your landscape so mental, where are the feelings, the passion?

“I admit that I am very mental. And I am interested in the final result of the work as much as the process. But I have the sensitivity to see the other. There is plenty of study, because I like to take care of the whole project, but this doesn’t means no that there are no feelings. My work is built by capturing the randomness of nature. I see what is potentially paintable: here the feelings come in. I feel sensibly connected to the river. Also through the process of painting in layers that I do. I often come back, repaint, erase. I don’t have it planned. It’s like a meditation ritual. I have a lot of communication with the matter. I put up to 30 layers in a painting.”

-And the more abstract video, what does it represent?

“It’s the source of my pictures in real motion: my stage. In the edition I also did a leeway of images and will exhibit it on the floor in a box of light. All accompanied by music with electronic sounds that I had made that evoke the sound of water.”