Today we’d like to introduce you to Carolina Amarillo

Hi Carolina, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

The heart of my story has always been love; it is all about love.

I have been interested in Art and Art-Making since I saw paintings by Botero, Alejandro Obregón, and other painters in the Museo Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. The feelings you can transmit through paintings have always interested me.

I studied Visual Arts with an emphasis in Fine Arts in my undergraduate studies at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Once I finished in 2019, I moved with my parents to Miami, Florida, where I continued making art in my new home until 2020.

In my undergrad, I explored color, subject matter, and abstraction; however, I always admired the highly technically skilled artists surrounding me. That is why, besides my undergrad studies, I worked under the wing of Camilo Calderón, director of Taller Trescientos Uno, in Bogotá. I studied the Barque techniques and other highly technical drawing and painting methods. Yes, the “feeling” of the painting was very interesting to me, but I yearned for more sophisticated images that “looked” like something else. The atelier approach to rendering, well-developed drawings, and well-applied oil painting techniques drove my interest out of a fascination with how someone can make something look so natural and how that talent can add to a narrative, feeling-driven image.

This yearning for the skills made me focus on that only in 2020, and I decided to attend the New York Academy of Art. The only school in New York City that manages the figure with such rigor but at the same time has such a contemporary approach to allow me to do whatever I wanted while applying those new sets of skills pulled me like a rope.

I had already heard of NYAA, but then I faced two new challenges I had no experience with yet: being an immigrant and no longer having a home to return to at night. I was missing love.

My first year at the New York Academy of Art was challenging. Suddenly, I saw myself surrounded by disgustingly talented people, speaking a language I could not wholly understand and feeling myself so out of it for being an immigrant. I was driven to this scenario out of love and passion for image-making and for how it can make you feel that I forgot about the love that surrounded me and now how I was alone, without a home, loveless.

That sentence: “You never know what you have until it is gone.” God, I hate it so much because it is true. I started this interview by discussing my links to art-making and how it drove me to another country that I forgot that it was always about love and the people surrounding me. My home.

When I was in my undergrad, I lost my grandfather, and only then was I able to understand how much art can express love. My first figurative, well-rendered piece was a portrait I made of him after his passing, and then I became obsessed with wanting things to look like other things so I could keep the image. He was not gone, he was there, in that painting.

Love allows us to create more honestly.

I continued my journey as mentioned for three different cities: Bogotá, Miami, and New York City. It was only in New York City that I was stroked again by the potential of the feeling, but now I have a more sophisticated set of skills.
Due to COVID and my perpetual fear of death after witnessing my grandfather’s death, the fear became my subject matter for so long, up until the point I made my entire thesis about it.
Amazing images came out of that fear; however, I was approaching these images wrongly. I created pieces in which the central essence was the presence that no longer existed in the spaces because of death.

Now, I go back to those images and now it was never about fear of death, it was about the love they have left behind.
It was and is love that preserves the essence of our loved ones here.
The opening line of my Artist Statement was: “We are born dying, but I do not want to die. For that reason, I balance my fear of death with its counterpart, love.”

At the New York Academy of Art, I majored in Painting with a track in Anatomy; the human body and its functions always fascinated me.

I began working as an Assistant Director of Continuing Studies when I graduated.
The New York Academy of Art had become a home; it had given me so much, including my new friends and loved ones, that it became difficult just to leave.

In addition, I also wanted to get a Master’s in Fine Arts so I could teach.
I will never forget that in 2015, a professor of mine, Tatiana Ropain (shout out to her, wherever she is), said once in class: “Knowledge is a borrowed item and one day, you must give it back.”

You give it back through teaching.

That is also why working in Continuing Education is remarkable for me, the possibility of giving education to someone in art so they can go through the same process I went through.
They are passionate and fascinated by something they see, so they want to replicate it and then fall in love with the making and the illusion, and YET find themselves being driven by love.

I think the steps of love are the exact steps of the creative process:
You love art.
You fall in love with art making.
And finally, you surrender yourself to love: The Creative Process.

Now, I see myself surrounded by love, not only in what I do (creative-wise) but also in being surrounded by people who love creating.

And that is my story, so far, all about love.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

I acknowledge that I have been privileged in my journey; however, the most significant obstacles have been Fear, Anxiety, Impostor Syndrome, and Grief.

– Impostor Syndrome was the first one to attack me; my friends and I call it “Ugly Brain.” Especially during my Master’s degree, I constantly questioned myself, talked down on me, and compared myself. I was my worst enemy.

– Fear came along with the impostor syndrome because I always thought I had something to prove to my family, friends, and instructors, but I kept ignoring that the only person I needed to prove myself to was myself. I was so scared of failing that it developed into something worse.

– Anxiety became my toxic best friend. Because of the first two above, anxiety came, sat in my chest, and told my face over and over again how much I did not deserve to be where I was and the things I had accomplished.

– Grief, 2023 started as the worst year of my life. After my grandfather died, I became anxious about ANYONE, including myself, dying that when it hit again, it hit me thrice.

On February 11th, my uncle (son of my deceased grandfather), brother of my mom, and my (step)grandmother, mother of my mother’s husband (the man I currently call dad) fell ill. Two different illnesses, on the same day, affected the same family. It affected me.
My uncle, who had raised me with a significantly firmed hand and strong family values, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. My first father figure after my grandfather was going to vanish in front of me, just like my grandfather did; they both died exactly the same way. My uncle died six months later; he was just 55.

And on the same day that this was happening, my grandmother suffered from a stroke, and she passed three weeks later; she was 84.

Both of them represented home for me in two different ways.
One raised me and showed me what a home is.
The other one welcomed me into a new home and called me her “oldest granddaughter” even when I was not hers…
And finally, due to my uncle’s passing, the apartment back in Bogota in which I was born and expected to die entered a whole discussion, and I was grieving that home as well.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?

I am a Visual Artist.

I focus on Painting, Drawing, and sometimes printmaking.

My work focuses on the feeling of a presence; my drawings and paintings always talk about love and unity through symbolistic elements like trees representing a figure or the figure itself.

I work with spaces, and my current body of work includes part of the anatomical body (human hearts) and flowers.

What does success mean to you?

I always knew I was not the person who was going to change the world, but as long as I can change, for the better, someone’s day is enough for me.

I care about what we leave in people, and how they will eventually remember us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.instagram.com/amarillo_carolina/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amarillo_carolina/

Image Credits

All artwork provided was created by Carolina Amarillo.
The personal photo of the conference was taken by: Anthony Artis @artphotofilms