Gonzalez, Beatriz, Paula Saneaux: “I look for beauty in the atypical”

Listín Diario Newspaper, September 29th

P8

Translation/

About the vocation: “Young people are afraid, I was too, of doing what we love for a living and loosing the opportunity of a safe path. I think fearing that is a mistake”, she expressed.

Paula Saneaux: “I look for beauty in the atypical”

The sculpture and painter of 2 years, flies toward her dreams.

Beatriz González

Santo Domingo,- The passion that took her to Chavon School after becoming a Bachelor in Advertising, is the same that impulses her to make another trip. At Parsons The New School of Design, Paula will complete her Bachelor in Fine Arts, a career she wanted to study from the beginning, but before leaving, the sculpture and painter of 23 years old, had her first show in the country. What started as an assignment, evolved into a group of revealing and inciting stories of reflection: Las Pracas.

Beauty and Tenebrism technician (but not of the tenebrous) Paula combines light and shadow, the physical and the psychological, trying to reproduce the imagination of teenagers, their worries and dissatisfactions, but also their hopes. She explores the physiology with subtle exaggerations, looking for the realism in each gesture, as she says: “For me it’s a challenge to obtain the expression of a person or the atmosphere of a specific moment. It’s not about creating a photograph, but capturing the essence of that being or moment.”

Was it what you looked for in The Pracas?

Exactly. I decided to go with the figure because it’s what captivates me. I think it’s more difficult to reproduce the attitude of a person than the atmosphere of a landscape. I looked for a theme I’d love, to take a person to another world, one that doesn’t really exists. I wanted to create a story with each character.

How much is there of you in those stories you recreated?

(she smiles). Everything you do has to do with yourself some how. With that I answer your question. A lot of people have asked me if the paintings are self-portraits. It’s okay if they want to think that way, but I’ve never been the model.

What motivates your glorification for the human body?

It’s curiosity and love for beauty and perfection (she says with a smile after a minute of thinking). No matter how many defects a person has, physical defects that we, here, say exist, the human being is perfect. Everything is very organized and within that order there is always beauty, it doesn’t matter the form. I love beauty, but I look for it in the atypical, what is not predictable. Each human being has a unique expression and I like finding it.

There is a Greco-Latin reference in your work, too, you talk about destiny and the strings that lead them. What makes you look through that world?

I think I still have that child in me. I love fantasy. Those stories they created, I believe really happened. It’s a world that doesn’t belong to us but still seems real.

Do you think everything is premeditated?

I think that destiny exists, but it’s not a one way path, where everything is already written. I think it has several branches that one can choose from.

A lot of young dominicans that are interested in the arts are not sure  about developing their talent or if they should pursue other careers because of the arts being so unstable...

That is something I’ve heard all my life. Young people are scared, I was scared too, of doing what we love and loosing the opportunity of doing something more secure. I think that’s the biggest mistake. When you love what you do you feel great about yourself and it shows, therefore you move forward. But, college it’s necessary. If I hadn’t studied Advertising maybe I‘d have felt a little incomplete as a professional, not because of lack of faith in painting, but because the knowledge you acquire from a university is basic.