Carolina Saidenberg

Interview with artist Carolina Saidenberg —

Peixinhos tec mista

1. Talk a little about yourself.
I was born in São Paulo, drawing and doodling since I was a child. My father also an artist and my mother encouraged me to develop my artistic talents from an early age. As long as I can remember, I was drawing something. I graduated Bachelor of Arts in ’98, later I did postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts o fSão Paulo. Even so I ended up following my father’s career in advertising and graphic design, but always doing arts in parallel. In 2011 I moved to Milan in Italy to study art, fashion and jewelry design. It was a brief but striking period in my life in every way and that was how I came back and for art entirely and ended up developing my current painting style.

Raposa

2. Why art?
Because it comes from within me, this need for expression through images. Art allows me to be myself.

3. What is your earliest memory of wanting to be an artist?
I do not remember wanting to be an artist, I just remember always drawing and painting almost all the time.

Malabarista osa

4. What are your favorite topics? And which materials do you use?
I am currently divided between circus characters and jugglers in urban landscapes and oriental themed paintings.
The female figure is a recurring theme in my works, the feminine universe within me. These phases repeat themselves in cycles in my life from time to time. I use various techniques, watercolor, gouache, sculpture, pastels, drawing, etc., but what I have been doing lately are oil and acrylic paintings. I very much like using the application of gold leaf also in my paintings.

Malabarista em queda

5. How do you work and address the theme of your works?
I often make reference folders with images that inspire me like photos I took from São Paulo and cities I’ve been with other images I collect where I find interesting things, I like old black and white circus pictures for example. I also make sketchbooks, where I go scribbling images, people, ideas, that serve as my inspiration. The theme of urban jugglers has much to do with the human condition of surviving and adapting to life, to the city, to circumstances. The jugglers are in the greatest danger hanging in nothingness, in the abyss, in the sky, and yet they can feel the beauty of being alive. Because life is precious and worth the risk.

Malabarismo Londres

6. Does any artist inspire you?
Gustav Klimt was a great inspiration in my life during college time, but many other artists inspire me, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Expressionists and surrealists call my attention.

Oiran mista

7. What are the best answers you have had to your work?
I felt good responses to all my work, coming from different audiences. I developed for a time urban landscapes seen through the eyes of the soul in 2013 that culminated with my exhibition in Paris called “Look upon – Look at the city”, then I began to paint the feminine and oriental universe with my exhibition “Gueisha” in 2014 and the theme of urban landscapes, has evolved into this theme of urban circus and jugglers that I have worked for my next exhibition “urban jugglers.”

Malabarista veneza

8. What do you like most about your job?
I like that I am always evolving, I can evaluate my previous and recent paintings and see an evolution, not only in the technical aspect of drawing and painting, but also in how I resolved certain themes and ways of expressing certain things symbolically.

Malabarista vermelha

9. What advice would you give to other artists or future artists?
Draw constantly by always striving to overcome, do not be afraid to make mistakes.

“Balance”

(Inspired by works by Carolina Saidenberg)

Today my heart
Try to stay balanced
Between passion, love and reason.
Difficult decision.
One-sided scale
To the other
Be very careful not to get
In love
Do not get hurt
Hurt
My heart behaves
Like a trapeze artist, a juggler.
Emotion never seen.
Balance among these beautiful
Feelings
That is only heart.
Pure emotion
Scales forward with passion
Come back with love
It stands balanced
Listen to reason.
Let life decide
Let it flow.
Happen naturally.
Love is like juggling, you control it, you balance it.
Only you can drop it.
Love and life.

Author: Edmundo Cavalcanti

10. Where do you see yourself in 05/10 years?
I hope to be still working with art in a larger studio and to be satisfied and happy with what I do.

Malabarista de circo

11. Plans for the future.
In the immediate future I will finish painting several canvases for my individual exhibition with urban jugglers that will happen now in May.

Photos: Roberto Carvalho (Carolina Saidenber’s husband)

Carolina Saidenberg

LINKS —

Website: https://carolinasaidenberg.com
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/CarolinaSaidenbergartist/
Instagram: @carolina_saidenberg_art

Edmundo Cavalcanti

Edmundo Cavalcanti é nosso colunista de artes para Arts Illustrated em São Paulo, Brasil.