BY ALFONSO CORONA AND ISA TRAVERSO-BURGER
For the past three months, Colombian Isa Zapata has been the artist-in-residence at the Miami Children’s Museum. She began drawing doors and windows, until one day she arrived to the Land of Opportunity and was faced with the discovery that she could no longer draw doors and windows and instead, her hand went for her inner child and out came the cutest fantasy characters. Her artwork has been exhibited both privately and collectively in places such as Brickell Key Art Show, HCC Art Collectors in New York, D’Cota, and Grand Bay Club. She is happy to showcase her talent for great non- profit organizations to help children. We tried to find out where her inspiration came from but according to her testimony, it may be that some giraffe takes over her soul when she is drawing.
Where does your passion for illustration begin?
Well, it started when I was a little girl. When I was about eight, I began copying landscapes, impressionism, realism, antique houses with earth colors. I don’t know why but I would paint houses with doors and windows. My heart was into that more than anything else. I came to live here and stopped painting for a while, and then one day I bought the tools and started painting again. I tried painting the houses and it didn’t work, it didn’t happen. It didn’t come to me and I thought, “I forgot how to paint, my God”. Suddenly a child appeared in my drawing, and I wondered how it happened, so I continued to enhance it with bright colors. It was like something inside me opened up; maybe because when you’re surrounded by family you are not aware of your full capacities and I had to come here alone and perhaps because I didn’t expect it, a new artistic side was born. I discovered who I was. I began drawing children themes and I didn’t know where they came from. Once, a friend even asked me what kind of drugs I used. I don’t. It was an awakening.
How is the creative process to create caricatures, how is the internal procedure? Sometimes I guide myself through watching the animals, or the theme, but most of the times it just comes out from within, I can’t explain it.
It arrives to my hand. I try to tell a story in every drawing, for example, a giraffe might have tennis shoes on, a mushroom will have a ladybug near, I don’t know, a bee can be in the background, but everything tells a little story.
Which is your favorite animal?
My favorite animal is the dolphin but I always draw giraffes.
What other techniques you use?
For work I mix digital with water paint sometimes. But mostly I work with acrylics, water colors, paper machier.
What would you like to be doing in 10 years?
I would like to have my own line of clothing with my designs for children and all the line for towels, sheets, etc... I want to paint it all!
How would you define your style?
Infantile, but there is a hidden message I perceive, a subliminal aspect. I look at a finished piece and I see something else too. I don’t know but I see an adult facet in it.
What is more transcendental about your art?
What I try to awaken, a feeling that makes you vulnerable to a juvenile sensation.
This proposal you bring is it the result of a dream or a dream to come true? A dream to become reality.
I’ve heard in many painters that they began painting closed doors, just like you, and that then the doors begin to open. In your case you found animals and distinctive places, what stage do you think you’re heading to?I have ideas to get the characters out of paper, and become three-dimensional. I want them to start running around and become palpable.
What are your immediate plans?
I am writing a story and also writing for children’s magazines. I’m working.
What is the most difficult part of your work?
To begin. Once two lines are drawn I see a shape. I don’t like to view books, I do it when the client requires a specific subject, but when I’m creating it’s doing those two lines that are the hardest part of the creation process.
