My name is Maria of God. I am an Interdisciplinary Artist. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico from Dominican/multiracial parents.
Art in its many forms, had always been a very important part of my life. I was brought up in a ridiculously dysfunctional home, so art and nature were my refuge. Through them I created the many worlds I wanted to live in.
At very early age I displayed great abilities in drawing and painting and as a curious child, I explored many raw materials that allowed me to create art utilizing pigments from flowers and leaves, different colors from soil, carbon, ashes, and wings of insects I found dead around the yard, e.g., dragonflies, butterflies, lady bugs and so on. I also had, and I still do, an outermost fascination with Egyptian and Indian history, biology and morphology, the philosophy of life and death, all that cool stuff.
I know art as something innate in me, so it was until I saw an image of Picasso (1973) and one of his paintings 'Girl before a Mirror', that I felt a tremendous connection. He, although was dead, became a great influence in my life, until today. We even share the same birthday, October 25.
I continued trying to act as a 'normal child', but my devotion for the elderly, animals, and people in need, always displayed my differences between other children even between my siblings.
Years later, I found myself drawing abstracts, nothing I had ever seen before. As I could identify later as some extraterrestrial spacecrafts. The shapes, colors, textures I needed to match with what I was processing at that moment.
At the age of eight I won a portrait contest in the Dominican Republic, not knowing that I could pull that kind of work, and I was also exploring landscapes, sewing and sculpting dresses in clay for dolls.
At sixteen my life changed drastically when parent number one chose my path in college. It was confusing, but most, devastating, as the seed of societal stereotypes was already implanted in my system, and art wasn't a doable career to sustain no one's life and less for a woman. So, they thought.
After college, and then working at a bank, I visited the United States. A great sense of freedom and expansion overflowed my soul. The cultural diversity, the languages, the food, art, art everywhere, so available. So, a new journey began.
Being in Miami, Fl. I quickly made friendship with people from all parts of the world. We all shared our knowledge in art, life lessons. It was the most amazing bohemian community.
I traveled, I explored.
I decided to settle in Miami. I jumped into the medical field trying to satisfy my strange curiosity for corpses and the mysteries of the human body. I had the amazing opportunity to do all the anatomy drawings for my professor and the fantastic adventure of visiting the morgue. That was the moment I encounter life, the nothingness of being a human being. It was the door that leads to pure consciousness.
My artwork took another form based on that experience; it was morbid. Perhaps I wanted to cross boundaries in search for more answers. I declined, so I had to dive into the aliveness of the Universe, the nature that surrounded me and most to try to find a source of pure meaning, although I had a sense of it, but it wasn't defined, yet.
I lived the 'Bedouins lifestyle', so to speak, met many groups of beautiful and creative people.
I was then exploring religion and arts. That was mind blowing! So, I experienced and practiced many different aspects of religions based on cultural beliefs, and as friends interpreted them.
Art wasn't something that I wanted to study formally, since I once stepped into a university and I didn't feel comfortable knowing from various students how self-expression wasn't quiet the main idea, instead to learn from a professor, so I heard similar comments from acquaintances.
Life and people were teaching me so much. As time passed, I began to implement all that I knew about art by borrowing books from the libraries, buying books, and supplies to practice. I was caught up into the world of dressing dolls utilizing air drying clays. That opened the door to a new experience, and I took a job as a bilingual translator at a Clay Shop. That place became my school where I only concentrated in what I needed to know to make porcelain dolls. That became a bitter/sweet torment. From a kiln to molds, slips, all to learn this new, fascinating art that was drove out of my passion for Victorian dresses and Indian bridal dresses. I turned my small apartment into a messy-porcelain studio. learning, barely sleeping, just try to read, watching videos, trying to figure out this new adventure and most how to make replicas of the dresses from images I had collected. After some time, I found myself making the most beautiful dolls ever! They looked like small women from the 1800's. The Indian bride, she was a dream. Suddenly I was taking orders to make dolls for brides and sweet 16's.
I was still painting on commissions, but the magic of making dolls was as if I had lived as a doll maker in a past life.
As time passed, I explored many other art venues, worked in so many different places, I went to another college, then I encounter the world of fashion jewelry, the shop was owned by a Moroccan gentleman. That took me on another journey, I remembered my attraction for Egyptian culture. I had the opportunity to design some pieces and from there I thought, 'handbags', I was on another mesmerizing road full of textiles and beautiful metals with colorful stones, beads, and so on. I created, and I still do, what I call Perfectly Unmatched Handbags and clutches.
To be continued....:)
**As an interdisciplinary artist I am always transitioning as my connection with the Universe deepens allowing me to perceive its beauty beyond what words can express.
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Maria Of God joined Pixels.com Licensing on June 13th, 2020.
