Breed – Elisa Alcalde’s favourite piece
Personal best – Elisa Alcalde
This is the first of a new series where we ask Breed artists to select a piece or project of their own that holds a special meaning for them. It may not necessarily be the most successful or even their favourite, simply one that stands out for them as important in some way. We’re intrigued to see the choices made and the stories they may lead to.
We’re starting with Elisa Alcalde. Elisa has been painting since 2012. Based in Santiago, Chile, she started out studying film, but had a revelation when an aunt gave her a watercolour painting set in 2012. She soon graduated to composing her own still life paintings from items borrowed or bought, produced on 100% cotton paper. She’s since worked for the likes of Palmer magazine and FT Magazine. Let’s see what she picks as her personal best.
What piece have you chosen?
I chose a 126 x 82cm watercolour named ‘fuero interno’ which translates as ‘inner self’ or more accurate ‘in my heart of heart’.
Why is it special to you?
I think this composition is very representative of my work in general. First of all it is still life and then it has many of the elements that I have been putting into my paintings continually, such as gingham tablecloths, books where I change the titles so I can say what I want and also some anime, in this case, from a book I bought in Berlin once. I remember when I painted it I liked the result so much and felt it was so personal that I named it ‘fuero interno’.
What’s the story behind it?
There is no story, since what I like from my paintings is that every spectator can relate with it from a different point of view and imagine what was happening in that image. Like when you see a movie and sometimes they film just a table or some still life just for context, here I made the same. I put some elements which I imagine could be on a summer table, maybe in a conversation between two people. But who are they or what are they talking about, or do the two glasses even belong to the same person? I leave that open to people’s imagination.
How did you come to create this piece?
One of the things that I like about still life is that it elevates some regular things to another place – a more magical one, which is the status of art. Even if it is not in a gallery and it is in someone’s home, they´re giving it meaning and space in their lives. So, I like to manage my compositions along those lines, with the things I have. To be able to create something beautiful from what I have in my house is one of my everyday challenges. Sometimes, I use other things, but in this case I just seized the sunlight that was coming through my window and thought of using the object´s shadows to be part of the composition. Also, I was reading Mariana Enriquez’s ‘Our Share of Night’, which I really loved and it has a painting on its cover (‘L’ange déchu’ by Alexandre Cabanel). So I used it as a double quote – first the book, which is excellent and then the painting which I also love so much. Beside that is an anime still from the book with some fruit, a knife, a candle… I think it creates a really good dialogue.