MARÍA ÁLVAREZ E

I'm a Madrid-based artist. I've been painting since I could hold a pencil. Of course, holding a pencil like a two-year-old, not very well... But I didn't get much better at it as I grew up. To this day I still have a "weird" pencil grip. I use more fingers than usual. I don't know, at school they always saw it as a mystical detail of an artist mind, and I wasn't going to be the one to deny the magic of such a myth. Today, my work has been sold to a multitude of clients and collectors who appreciate it, both in Spain, where I live, and in many foreign countries in Europe and the rest of the world. How did I go from being a child who couldn't hold a pencil to that? Let me tell you. I grew up in Vigo, Galicia. At school, my teachers warned my parents that "the child has remarkable gifts for artistic activities". So, when I was 7 years old, I started to study drawing and painting with a local painter, to whom I owe all my first influences and knowledge in terms of techniques and styles. His name was Mingos Teixeira, and he had an art studio near my house. I still remember the first time he called me to come into the 'big room', the important one, where paintings were painted on easels (until then, I was kept at the tables in an anteroom where only drawing was done). He said to me: "child, come in here" (I had been there such a short time that he didn't even know my name). That day I began my first "large-format" work (considering that I was about 120 centimetres tall, a 60-centimetre piece of paper was considerable for me). It was a pastel rabbit that I still have framed in my childhood home.    I spent several years with Mingos, won a few children's art competitions, and, with the onset of tumultuous adolescence at around 12, I asked my parents to give up painting lessons and study piano. I was quite emotionally intense, and, frankly, I needed something more immediate to express myself with. Painting a picture was too slow a process, and by the time I finished it, my mind was already on other things. Writing a song allowed me to tell what I was feeling right in the moment. And so I gave up art classes. Because of adolescence. But, one day, my father met Mingos in the street, and, in a short conversation, he apologised for my withdrawal: "well, it seems that María got tired of painting...". To which Mingos replied: "It's all right, she'll be back, hasn't she taken piano lessons or something like that? My father, surprised, nodded, and Mingos said: "those who have it in them, always need to bring it out in one way or another, they never leave it". And Mingos was absolutely right. I spent the next few years between lessons in music theory, composition, and of course piano, until I "emigrated" to Madrid at the age of 18, to study at the University. Everybody told me that I had to study Fine Arts... But, you see... Here's the thing, the real truth that I didn't confess to anyone at the time: I had a long-distance boyfriend in Madrid, and what interested me was to be able to see him. And it turns out that the Audiovisual Communication degree, at that time, was only taught in Madrid and Salamanca. So, officially, that degree was the one that interested me. That's how I managed to move to Madrid. It's not the best reason, I admit now in my adulthood, but hey, at least it's a romantic story. That's the thing about adolescence. I finished my degree, a master's degree in design and post-production, a dissertation in Applied Creativity and I ended up working as a video editor and multimedia creative in several production companies and television. Oh, and the boyfriend didn't last two years. It was clear. The point is, all this training and experience broadened my concept of image and opened doors to other art forms such as cinema, photography and graphic design. My current works would not be the same without all those bases in composition, light, color and narrative. ​What it is interesting is that during all these years I never stopped painting. Mingos was right: everything I studied and created, professionally or personally, was related to art. And, in my free time, I continued to paint. I hadn't stopped since I was 12 years old. But I saw it as something private, something for myself. Even though it was always what I had always excelled at, what others had always emphasised about me, I don't know why, I never thought of it as a real profession. Well, maybe I do. It's probably because of the concept that society has of artists (society, which is always so easily guilty of everything that happens to us). One ordinary day, in the television newsroom where I worked (and this is the real plot twist of this story), in an equally ordinary conversation with one of my colleagues, I told him that I liked painting. And, as it was already mobile time (it's 2014 already), he asked me to show him some of the photos of my paintings. I showed him a recent abstract painting, and his words were: (attention) "But what are you doing working here?". I was flabbergasted. He continued, "Why don't you just paint and sell your work?" And, at that moment, I was enlightened. I had never considered it before, and suddenly I realised that it was a real option. Of course, an option a thousand times more desired by my inner self: to work doing what I do best and what others have always appreciated most about me? Thank you Moi. So, I quickly prepared a dossier with the best works I had done to date and in 2015 I sent it to several galleries in Madrid. Look, thanks again to the Internet, I can check my sent folder in Gmail and count the number of dossiers I sent. There were 19. Of those, 3 replied. Of those three, one thanked me, but they had a full calendar of exhibitions for years. Another one told me that they would be able to exhibit me the following year. And the last one made an appointment for me on the spot. Guess which one I kept. The rest, I'll sum it up quickly: I went to the appointment, I met the gallery owner, he came to my house another day to see the works in person, he took two of them to exhibit them, and, in a few days, they were both sold. My professional career as a visual artist had begun. From 2015 to 2024 I was represented by this gallery (if you are interested to know, in the CV you can check its name). Nine years of numerous group exhibitions and three solo exhibitions, among other actions and events (yes, in the CV I have them sorted by date). And, coming to the present (finally! Forgive me... although if you've come this far, it's because you were interested in the story), two things happened: Firstly: I was tired of not having control of my work (you know, exclusivity with the gallery, not being able to exhibit or sell on my own, high commissions...) and I wanted freedom. Secondly: the gallery wanted to change stylistic direction. So, the moments came together and I became an independent artist. Where I wanted to be. Where I am now. And where I've never been better. ​