Nuria Maria Biography

Growing up in an artist family, ( Nuria being 5th generation in the arts), art was always around. Everywhere; either physically in and outside the house, or in the conversations, preferably late into the evening in her parents' ateliers. It permeated the lives of Nuria and her sister from a young age on. During summer holidays in Italy a little cooling down from the 48 degrees was more likely to be found in the old churches and museums than in the swimming pool. It fed a deep interest in art.

After finishing high school Nuria went to the University of Amsterdam to study Cultural Studies. It lasted only 1 month. After another attempt of studying, this time Psychology at the University of Tilburg, she decided it didn't work out. To freshen the mind she went to Florence, Italy to follow a two month language course. Being in Italy, surrounded again by an incredible amount of paintings, churches, frescoes, statues, and feeling 'happy as a pig in clover', she decided to study what she loves most in life: art.

In 2012 she started at the art academy in Maastricht. Coming there initially to paint, painting didn't work out for her at the academy. More and more she got into video art. Using her own music combined with atmospheric video images she found a new way to express herself. The weather frequently becoming a welcome visitor – as an inspiration, as well as the subject itself for her videos – she graduated in 2014 with a video installation of a love story between the summer and the autumn. Two months later she was painting again.

At first the paintings were figurative- movie scene-like scenarios. Then slowly the subjects became more and more abstract. The weather still being a significant subject for her paintings – she tries to capture the atmosphere of a certain moment, a day in the season, a memory, a certain type of light. The colours carry the atmosphere, the interaction between the subjects create the situation: They attract – or push, float, fall, fly, or are being blown out of the painting; reflecting the laws of nature, as well as painting from a more personal point of view; the interaction between people, or the state of mind you are in yourself.

Now Nuria is living in both Rotterdam and in the countryside near Maastricht; this is where she comes from and is to be found more and more nowadays. Living in the countryside gives her good energy. Besides, having the late night atelier talks is something she wouldn't want to miss for anything.

"This place is where you can smell the season, hear the leaves blowing in the wind, here's a certain type of light.

In the end, the most important thing is for me, to reflect, carry something to the outside world, that you feel within yourself; a perception of what lives inside you. Something that catched your eye and made a whole world on its own in that moment, and you bring it out again. Like a Camera Obscura back and forth.

I can work from colours as a starting point, or a certain rhythm with forms, but the feeling that I have about exactly that moment and sentiment that I want to reflect, is always more important than the purely visible state of the painting. That is perhaps, why it can take either one day or a whole month to get the painting exactly the way I need it to be; I can find it pretty, (and I am very much on the aesthetics), but it has to catch a moment in the core."
Nuria Maria