Colombian painters achieve recognition amid coronavirus

By Sergio Garcia Hernandez

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) - The coronavirus pandemic forced multiple artists to migrate to digital platforms to sell their works or win over their audience.

Faced with the difficulties of the sector, the young Colombian painters Carolina Garcia and Sara Lopez have created the community "Las chicas que pintan" (The Girls Who Paint), with which they have given a boost to their careers in the midst of confinements.

The initiative has allowed them to obtain recognitions, including awards from recent calls such as Capital Semilla 2020 from the Mayor's Office of Medellin and Fondo Emprender del Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (Sena) in their country.

Their triumphs in national entrepreneurship and culture competitions have positioned them as two of the most projected painters in Colombia. They have given themselves a place in the national art scene for their handling of techniques such as oil, acrylic, muralism, and watercolor.

Despite the fact that the two painters had been related to art for years, it was during the pandemic that The Girls Who Paint project achieved unexpected recognition as 2020 dawned.

The community they have created today has almost 7,000 followers on Instagram and a record of about 70 workshops that have been taught by virtual means in the midst of the emergency caused by the coronavirus.

The Girls Who Paint was born in October 2019 in the middle of an art festival on Tierra Bomba beach, near Cartagena, when Sara and Carolina recognized each other's talent and decided to join forces to build a community of people who, like them, would like to venture into painting.

Sara, passionate about painting murals in the streets using the technique of muralism, says that together with Carolina they seek to invite people to overcome their fear of drawing and risk exploring with art.

"I, for example, came across the theme of muralism in my home when I began to imagine how a wall, converted into canvas, can be explored to bring it to life and fill it with color," Sara tells Anadolu Agency.

The 33-year-old artist also details that, despite the fact that oil painting is one of the techniques she has practiced the most in her life, with The Girls Who Paint she found a field to explore in acrylic.

“I considered oil my favorite technique because of the versatility and realism that one can achieve, but last year I had the opportunity to work with acrylic and I think that at this moment it is a technique that I enjoy the most. It seems very fluid and easy to work with. It allows the mixture of colors very similar to oil, although obviously drying much faster, which I like because of the dynamism it offers,” explained Sara.

Carolina, 34, shares her origins in oil painting, as does Sara, with whom she has ventured into drawing portraits, a passion inherited from her teacher Leonardo Luque. Like Sara, she enjoys muralism but finds in watercolor a technique with which her followers and students can have a means of expression.

“Watercolor is the technique that we use the most in our workshops because it transmits relaxation, it is fluid, very fresh, and allows a lot of personality expression. That is very popular in the community that we have built and that has become The girls who paint. Anyone who is part of this community and participates in our workshops is already a girl who paints,” the artist clarifies to Anadolu Agency.

With their work, Sara and Carolina also affirm that they have sought to offer a respite through workshops so that their students find a space to get out of the stress and anxiety that the pandemic has caused.

"We want to give a contribution at this time that the situation has been so chaotic and so different for everyone with so much uncertainty, stress, and anxiety," said Sara.

Carolina points out, in turn, that The Girls Who Paint project has become a place where people "can disconnect and get out of the routine through painting."

Both painters are convinced that art has the benefit of improving people's quality of life. Perhaps that philosophy is what they have managed to capture in their murals, paintings, and workshops and what has allowed them to win the recent awards amid the difficult conditions for the culture sector in the pandemic.

Sara and Carolina are two emerging artists, two talents, two women who with strokes have built a community around them, thousands of followers who claim the art as a means of expression to narrate a time in the midst of the coronavirus. They are the girls who paint.

*Juan Felipe Velez contributed to the story