We were lucky to catch up with Isabela Puga recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Isabela thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happy as an artist? I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

Am I happy as an artist? Of course! But I am only 25 years old and still have a lot of paths to walk before I can fulfill my goals as an artist and be happier with my career (it just got started!). I am really lucky my family have always supported me, and besides some “teenager summer job” I never had to work in something that had nothing to do with creativity or art, so I don’t really think about what my life would be outside the art world or if I just had a regular job, I guess I would be unhappy, I would still have a need to create, right?

I currently work in a gallery, so I get to be surrounded by artists and gallerists all the time, which makes it a perfect environment to grow both my creativity and level of exigency, as well as to learn how the art market works, what mistakes not to make and what are the things that may help me to improve and achieve to enter this little and competitive world full of great artists.

Isabela, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Isabela Puga, I am a young artist based in Madrid trying to make my way into the art world. I guess like most of artist, I got into this path because of a need to create and to do great beautiful things. I’ve always been creative and somehow introspective, which I believe if you know how to conduce these qualities into creating a piece of art, is the perfect combination to also be complete yourself. Some years ago, I found my language and way to communicate through painting and since then I have made all that was in my hands to seek a way to live my life through art.

My work consists in a very analytic painting, with a minimal aesthetic, but with a very spiritual component. I limit myself to use only black and gold, sometimes combined with blue or red color fields, to force myself to be as creative as I can with such a limited palette, and mostly all the times in big canvases. I try to make art that communicates with people while allowing them to have a moment of contemplation and quietness. The fact of not using lots of materials or complex compositions it’s an answer to an era of images, internet, Instagram, Tik Tok… where we are seeing lots of random things all the time, nonstop. As opposed, I try to present to the public a moment of silence, of enjoying the void that few colors can pose and contemplate them while entering one’s world. It’s a moment to run away from the stimuli from outside and to enter your own world through art.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I graduated from Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona and felt like I didn’t know anything about the art market, how it works, or how to get in as an artist myself, so I moved to Madrid to get a master’s degree on Art Market and Related Businesses. I got my degree and started to paint again (which I couldn’t do before because of the lack of time) but I got a job as the director’s assistant at a contemporary art gallery (which was definitely a thumbs up considering I had just graduated and had no previous experience). Although the job was at an art gallery and I am a painter, I never told the director I was an artist, I wanted to separate my professional career from my artistic career. After a couple of months, they found out about my paintings and luckily, they liked them, so they offered me to be one of their represented artists. “Jackpot!” I thought, I can do both! I can work full time to earn money to paint, and also have the opportunity to exhibit my art in a gallery! Since then, I have managed to work full time at the gallery and to have time to paint just enough to go to a couple of art fairs. However, I believe I am currently living this time where I need to pivot on my career: in a couple of months I will have an exhibition and after that there is another fair that I am attending, therefore I am starting to notice that if I want to keep growing as an artist I will need to figure out some things such as my routines or time schedules so I can focus on achieving goals that right now are difficult because of the lack of time.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I feel that to be an artist requires a lot of solitude and self-time to look inside you and to be critic about your feelings, your inquietudes, your motivations, your referents, and taste. All of this followed by a long creative process where you need to understand these thoughts and find that tool to materialize them into an art piece. This time to reflect and think is sometimes lonely and can drive you to be hard on yourself as well as demanding and sometimes even unhappy with the results. Therefore, it is amazingly rewarding and fulfilling when you pass over that vertiginous moment when you show your art and you get that approval from the art world, the collectors, and the public. That time when you are in front of someone that is enjoying your art and you are just feeling completely nude, because you remember that time of solitude when you were creating because something inside of you reeeally needs to make that piece of art without any “reasonable reason”. You just feel like you need to do it. Then, when someone comes and compliments you for doing it, the feeling is just rewarding, it makes you believe you are not really alone while creating, you have something to say that somebody out there is eventually going to see and when that connection is made, the piece is complete.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @isabelapuga__
• Website: www.isabelapuga.com
• Other: https://galeriabat.com/es/shop/artista/isabela-puga

Image Credits
Isabela Puga with her artwork M_CB_02 Artwork: M_CB_01 Artwork: M_CB_02 Artwork: M_MS_06 Artwork: M3_AM_2 Artwork: M3_AM_3