“I was a girl who always drew, from a very young age, I barely had a crayon or a pencil, I was already scratching and drawing. When I was older, my mother was prosecuting me in the arts, she taught me to draw, to take measurements and to do things with proportion, which from an academic point of view I consider essential to represent reality ”, expresses Fernanda Deschamps.
During her high school days she was a big fan of English rock and new age music groups, and she loved to make portraits of members of Duran Duran and Bono, from U2, to give as gifts to her friends.
“I started to like taking portraits a lot and I did it without pretensions, but some time later a guy realized that my faces looked more or less good (laughs), and he commissioned me my first portrait. So it was already something serious and where they gave me a reward, that was in approximately 1993 and I did it in a self-taught way because I had not really had any professional training”.
With the passage of time he continued to create in a self-taught way until it was time to make a decision for his professional path, and he studied the Bachelor of Art History.
“My mother was afraid that I would study Plastic Arts because it would not pervert me, and with that fear, of the difficult situation of artists, as if they did not have enough talent to make a living from what they do.”
In her work Fernanda shows the playful, intimate, self-referential look —in some cases— that seductively invites us to enter a world of sensations. A world whose original source is found in childhood, a time in which she herself shaped her aesthetic discourse. It is no coincidence, therefore, that fantasy and reality, the dreamlike and the real, the figurative and the abstract, coexist in her proposal in a harmonious way.
“I really like to capture landscapes in my work, because they are a way of practicing the power of color, drawing and textures. But most of my work focuses on portraits, I take the human figure as a metaphor for an idea or a piece of poetry.
To present her work, with the support of her mother, she sought out museums and houses of culture, holding important exhibitions, mainly in Mexico City and Cuernavaca.
“My first exhibition was at the Casa de Cultura Reyes Heroles, in Coyoacán, and all my paintings were sold, it was incredible to start off on the right foot.”
Likewise, Fernanda remembers that at that time she was studying at the National Watercolor Museum directed by Alfredo Guati Rojo, and there she had various exhibitions as a student in different salons, first in those for amateurs and little by little among those with more experience.
“Alfredo Guati Rojo was one of my great watercolor teachers, a technique that I love, because despite the fact that it is reputed to be extremely difficult, you can have a very well clarified drawing so that with the water, which is deep, it makes what you want. The drawing is the structural, rigid part and the water is madness and emotion, it is a very balanced way of creating something”.
Fernanda took courses on techniques and creativity with Conrado Domínguez. She with José Luis Cuevas, she at the Morelense Center for the Arts (CMA) and with Enrique Cattaneo, with whom she learned engraving and stamping techniques, a subject on which she did her undergraduate thesis.
“I could say that I haven’t just trained because artists must constantly continue studying, drawing and never stop doing it.”
In Cuernavaca, he has exhibited at La Tallera, the Cuernavaca City Museum (Mucic), the Borda Garden and the Juan Soriano Museum of Contemporary Art, among others.
“In Cuernavaca there are many artists, and the authorities (I want to) tell them that many spaces are required for all disciplines and budgets for the education and exhibition of talent.”
In 2002 she was invited to the project Dos momentos: Plástica de la Zona Centro, from Conaculta and the National Institute of Fine Arts, where she shared space with Gilberto Aceves Navarro, Rafael Coronel, Rafael Cauduro, Luis Nishizawa, Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo.
In the same way, in 2006 his painting El otro Ángel, ¿de la Independencia? was selected, among more than 2000 works from all over the continent, in the First Rafael Cauduro Drawing Biennial of the Americas.
His artistic quality gave him first place in the Sixth UNAM Authors Portrait Contest 2018 with the work entitled Edmundo O’Gorman.
Fernanda has shared her talent and experience with the new generations through teaching at the university level, teaching History of Architecture and History of Furniture, an experience that has been very enriching.
Likewise, he mentions that other arts such as music and poetry have been a fundamental part of his creative process and inspiration. Although when painting or drawing on the canvas he prefers the environment in total silence.
“Looking at other artistic disciplines is very rich, because as a painter it greatly enriches the ideas and the plastic language.”
Finally, Deschamps mentions that his next pictorial project addresses the issue of raising awareness about the normalized violence that exists within families.
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2023-07-11 06:18:57
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