Go on a Journey with Claudia Robles-Gil
Claudia is an emerging, multicultural artist who studied and practiced at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Tufts University) and the Art Students League of New York. Her artwork is largely influenced by her experience growing up between two countries and traveling often. We love her use of color and texture, which brings the paintings to life and allows you to imagine yourself within them.
Claudia's work was recently exhibited at Visionary Art Collective, Boston City Hall, and Kathryn Schulz Gallery in Cambridge, MA. Previously, her work was featured in British Vogue, and in Boston, Munich, and Mexico City-based exhibitions and publications.
Keep reading to learn more about Claudia and her unique perspective!
What would you like people to know when they first come across your artworks?
The first thing I’d like for people is to feel something! Having found myself in landscapes that quite literally steal my breath away, I hope to capture even a fraction of that instant emotional impact through my art. Whether it’s the exhilarating mist of crashing ocean waves, or the melancholic calm that accompanies a sunset. I want my art to evoke that amazing feeling of when beauty overcomes you.
Beyond the emotion comes the curiosity. There is so much visual and experiential richness we take for granted in our daily life, because we are so accustomed to what things look like: trees, the sky, the clouds, water. But art is interesting because it encourages you to look at something you already ‘know’ in a different way. To think, ‘Huh, that’s cool how this is portrayed. I wonder why that is.’ ‘What is so interesting about a tree, and specifically this tree, that the artist decided to paint it? And why in this way?’ So, effective artistic representation sparks a sense of curiosity and wonder that is normally dormant in daily life. And by effective I don’t mean realistic – rather, I mean representation that manages to make someone, if even for just a second, marvel about that thing it intends to represent.
Given that my paintings draw inspiration from diverse landscapes and countries, I hope for one piece of that curiosity to be directed towards the natural and cultural richness of the parts of the world they portray. Each place I’ve visited and captured through art has its own ‘signature’ so to speak, speaks its own visual and aesthetic language. In some of my earlier works, I explored the Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead through vibrant altar paintings whose vivid colors, cempasuchil flowers, sugar skulls and intricate decorations all point to an unmistakably Mexican arrangement. Similarly, Huatulco’s unique collection of nature – a distinctive mix of Delonix Regia trees and coconut palms, combined with the ocean’s presence and elephant-shaped islands, collectively embody the ‘heartbeat’ of this special place.
In this way, every piece is personal, and every piece comes from a source that is both uniquely biocultural (personal to its land) but also uniquely expressive (personal to the artist). And then of course there is a layer that makes it subjectively evocative (personal to the viewer itself). It’s the combination of all these interactions that makes the experience of art so engaging. I’d hope for my viewers to feel encouraged to explore all of these different layers when they see my paintings.
When thinking about where you are in your journey, what are you most excited about and what keeps you inspired for the future?
It’s funny because a part of me feels like I am only getting started. I still consider myself an emerging artist who is only now just ready to take flight into this crazy but amazing journey.
Looking back, I realize there has been so much learning and experience — both in the studio and in life — that has paved the way for the confidence and faith I now have. A few years ago, my painting would focus on observational accuracy, and I had not fully explored why I was drawn to the subject matter that I was drawn to. Over the years, I’ve come to understand the emotional and storytelling power of art. I’ve moved from technically-driven painting to painting that comes directly from the soul.
I now approach painting very differently; as a deep immersion into the environment I’m inspired by. I now understand that painting is beautiful exactly because of its departure from the exact; it’s that intimate, subjective emotional interpretation, expressed uniquely through the energy conveyed in the movement of brushwork, the contrast of color, the softness or sharpness, that gives a painting its invaluable worth. It’s a way for someone to use paint and brushwork as vessels to convey their unique experience and the meaning they find in, and attribute to, the world. This understanding has led me to no longer strive for perfect visual accuracy, but rather for something more profound: personal expression of my experience, a unique perspective of existence that only I — and nobody else — can bring to the world.
All that said, I’ve never been more excited than I am now about where I’m at. I feel like I’m holding so much creative energy and so many ideas in my hands that I’m ready to bring to life. I recently began a series inspired by Huatulco, Oaxaca in Mexico, a lush and sacred land full of life and earthiness and color and vitality. I have some large-scale paintings in the works for this series. I’m excited to see what my deep immersion into this landscape, as well as the personal exploration of a slice of my beautiful country, will bring to my art.
Santa Teresa Sunset II, 2023. Oil on canvas.
“There is so much visual and experiential richness we take for granted in our daily life, because we are so accustomed to what things look like: trees, the sky, the clouds, water. But art is interesting because it encourages you to look at something you already ‘know’ in a different way. To think, ‘Huh, that’s cool how this is portrayed – I wonder why that is.”
If you could go to dinner with any artist who would it be and why?
If I could go to dinner with an artist, without a doubt it would have to be Van Gogh. There’s something about him and his experience of the world, that feels as though he’s on a completely different wavelength from his contemporaries and the world at large. Van Gogh did not just paint pretty pictures. He held a profound understanding of the interplay between observation, beauty, and the very meaning of existence. He believed art had the power to reveal the deepest truths of life. Hell, he did not even paint to make it into the world of art business (though he tried along the way). He painted simply for the sake of the act of painting and to try to capture the beautiful and strange world around him.
He painted the most mundane and yet the most extraordinary things we take for granted, capturing the ephemeral beauty of flowers, the waves of color that make up the light we see in the sky, the life-giving and swirling emotion of trees, all with pure, unrestrained emotion and instinct. He knew that even the simplest and most ordinary parts of existence contained profound beauty only for those willing to perceive it.
I think Van Gogh is one of those special kinds of people that was so misunderstood because of the completely different, spiritual plane of existence he occupied from ordinary people. A conversation to hear his perspective and how he approached observation of nature would be a life-changing immersion into a completely different dimension of reality not usually accessible to a normal person.
Gratitude, 2023. Acrylic and oil on canvas.
What is the best piece of advice you've been given?
The best advice I’ve received focuses on the idea of courage: “Face your fears.” This advice has impacted my approach to all aspects of life – be it relationships, family, self-doubt, or my art.
I’ll get a little bit into the art part of it: if you are willing to wake up to them, you realize there is so much fear sprinkled in every step of the journey. There’s the more obvious ones: What if my work is not good enough? What if I don’t make it? We often sabotage ourselves before we even try, because fear is more comfortable and familiar than actually going for it and getting beaten up in the process.
But, I’ve also noticed the more subtle fears of the day-to-day experience of painting: what if this next brushstroke ruins this part of the painting? What if I overmix colors and lose the vibrancy of this sky? What if adding this tree wrecks the composition? What if shipping a large painting is difficult? What if it gets lost in transit? If you let them… these can keep going and going. There are so many fears at the micro-level that we don’t realize we have until we sit down to willingly examine and verbalize them.
So for me, facing my fears has involved a constant cyclical process of realizing there’s fear behind parts of the process I avoid or hesitate to act on. And once I push myself to look at this fear closely… accept it, let go, and do it anyway. I’ve realized from these moments that there are infinite excuses we can make that all come down to fear, and these ultimately become your limits if you let them. I could tell myself, ‘This is good enough as it is’ and let it stop me from continuing a piece out of fear of how the next stroke could change it. Or, I can acknowledge that fear, look it dead in the eye, and say goodbye to this painting because I have faith that risk can transform into something truly magnificent.
So, while I can’t say I’ve conquered all my fears, I actively practice facing them. For me it’s about making the choice to live courageously in all parts of life, including art. This means to continue putting myself out there and trying. You’ve got to be okay with trying something new and failing, be okay with criticism and setbacks, be okay with having to try for a long time before people see you and believe in you. Because once you decide you’re okay with the painful parts of it, but decide you’re gonna go ahead and try anyway, that’s when the real journey (and fun) begins.
What music are you listening to these days?
I’m glad you asked!
Music is such an important part of my art practice, as it not only inspires the art itself, but also drives flow during my creative process. I vary what I listen to depending on the type of energy I’m feeling, but it’s mostly a mix of flowy or highly energetic house/techno, and other times it will be softer acoustic music when I’m feeling a more relaxed mood and pace.
These days, I’m listening to Anjunadeep 07, an eclectic mix of house/techno tracks. I’m really enjoying immersing myself into it while painting and love how seamlessly each track blends into the next. Music takes me on a journey while I paint, to the point where its energy can even get translated into the type of brushstrokes I make or the colors I choose. I sometimes like to dance and move my body while I paint as well, so the mind/body flow can actually be a blissful part of the experience.
When I was painting my recent Costa Rica series, I listened to a lot of Nora en Pure – her ethereal, earthy and aquatic tracks helped me channel the energies of the landscapes I painted. Now, as I begin my Huatulco series and paint nature live, Anjunadeep 7 flows in synchrony, almost as a soundtrack to my observation of the movement in front of me – the waves swirling, the clouds melting, the birds flying around me or the trees swaying.
Honestly, I am so grateful for music. It’s always been a strange, magical and constant companion to me to cushion this journey of life, and I know my art would not be what it is today without it!