María Esther Vargas
Artist
When I was 5 years old I realized that I loved to draw what I saw around me: my mother gave me my first box of colours. Soon I entered a school where the teacher used to make me draw things on the board. I made paintings for all my classmates. This was a hobby I inherited from my maternal grandmother. I was also attracted to great colourists and to geometrical forms from a very young age and at the age of 9, I copied Picasso’s “Three Musicians” into a mural.
In 1967 I started to study Chemical Engineering at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá where I was culturally enriched by taking free courses in Humanities and Fine Arts. My marriage to a Dutchman took me to Europe in 1984 where I visited great museums and studied the Great Masters. In 1994, encouraged by the sales of portraits made in Germany and the enthusiasm caused within the circle of Nordic friends by the colour of the tropics that I carry in my soul, I decided to devote myself professionally to painting. The painters who have influenced me are August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky, Alejandro Obregón, Cézanne, and in general all the great colourists.
What is striking in my work is the handling of colour and composition, gifts I received from nature. I totally identify with Kandinsky when he says: “Colour hides a power that is still unknown but real… it provokes a physical vibration in the soul”. I think that colour is joy and that is what I want to convey through my work. I think it is the reason why my paintings are sold.
