Laura Pretto Vargas
My name is Laura Pretto Vargas, 29 years old. I'm an Italo-Brazilian artist living in Miami.
I attended Istituto Marangoni Milano for a Fashion Design intensive program and Fine Arts at Accademia di Belli Arti di Brera. I also worked as an apprentice at Atelier Lou Borghetti (Porto Alegre - Brazil) to refine my studies and practice. Beginning of my education as a fashion designer I realized the fashion industry was not the correct setting to explore my creative impulses, and then I decided to pursue a painting career. I fell in love with art when I was very young. Many years later, it is still what gives me strength when pursuing my artistic career.
My background has always been very influential in my art; since my parents are Brazilian and Italian, they naturally influenced me. However, as I got older, living on two different continents, Miami (in America) and Milan (in Europe), made me realize that certain characteristics of people from each part of the world stood out to me. This has caused me to incorporate these cultural influences into my art.
My paintings are gestural and aesthetically similar to artworks from the Abstract Expressionist movement, the canvases are filled with highly textural brush marks and color application. As a lover of art and history, my work gains inspiration from it and in a variety of styles. My inspiration also comes from nature and my inner feelings. I paint abstract and abstract figurative works with mainly acrylic and oil paints but I experience and have appreciation for additional mediums.
My process is very intuitive, not systematic. When an idea hits me, I run with it. For me, the whole art creation process is very emotional, so everything flows naturally without thinking about things too much. Once an idea has been created, every brushstroke becomes a moment of self-reflection, leading to even more new ideas emerging from that original one.
For me, painting has always been an outlet to express how I feel and its emotion. It's not about what I see or think people want to see, but about what I feel and how that emotion shapes my artwork. My paintings are expressions of my imagination and memories. The subjects are often distorted, exaggerated, or sometimes completely abandoned or abstracted to convey my inner feelings or ideas. This may be seen as chaotic by some, but it's actually very structured.
Art for me is a way to communicate thorough the materials, techniques and forms I use, my ideas and what I feel to my viewer, as well as challenge, provoke and instigate in the viewer ideas and feelings of their own.
I think art is a movement of self expression that changes as you grow and learn, on your terms. Art is forever! A piece of art is a forever statement your soul makes, that desires to share with the rest of the world.
My artistic language seeks to express feelings of vulnerability, happiness, energy, sexuality, and so on. My abstract works express shared human emotions and are made to connect with my own and other’s specific emotional life experiences, providing a space for connection and reflection.
In my opinion art has power to play with our emotions and make us lose ourselves in it. My work aims to open your mind and make the viewer feel/ experience something differently.
Art is a language in itself, a way to communicate with people from all over. In my work, I try to express something beyond objective reality. An internal sensation always drives me to do what I love most: create new worlds. In essence, my work is an inner narration told through my paintings.
My goal as an artist is to convey a message, a feeling through my art. So you don't need to understand all of what you see, but instead, feel something from it. So my goal is to reach as many people as possible with my work so that they can be impacted in some way by its message.
I hope you enjoy my art as much as I enjoyed creating it. Visit my website and social media to learn and see more of my art, or feel free to contact me.
Country Brazil / Italy / United States
Website www.lauraprettovargas.com
