Realism Ambassador of the Week: Jessica Oliveras

Meet this week’s top Realism Today Ambassador, Jessica Oliveras.

Jessica Oliveras was born in 1991 in a small town near Barcelona, Spain. As her father is the Catalan painter Josep Oliveras and her mother an art books Director, she grew up surrounded by paintings and in the company of artists and art collectors. Her love of art started at an early age when her father’s paintings became both a reference and a source of artistic inspiration for her.

Jessica went on to develop a passion for romantic painters such as Delacroix, Girodet, and Marià Fortuny. She was particularly drawn to their exotic subjects, the exaggerated emotionalism and drama, and the orientalism which has inspired her own work. Later she became fascinated by the light used by painters such as Turner and Sorolla, having a strong influence on the use of whites in her own paintings.

“My paintings are an introspective work of the probabilities of our existence. I am fascinated by life’s ephemeral quality that makes each person’s existence an unlikely miracle. I want to evoke the feeling of eternity in our fragile but fierce threads of existence. I reflect my own feelings into the person depicted, and by capturing their purest essence I prove that today, them and I, we do exist.”

Jessica started to paint professionally in London, where she lived for eight years. Recently she moved to Spain in a search to reconnect with her roots. She currently works and resides near Barcelona.

On “Selfhood,” featured above:

Life is ephemeral by nature, starting with the fact that each person’s life is such an unlikely miracle that it is almost impossible. What was the probability that my lineage remained intact since human existence and I was born? Almost none. And what was this same probability in reference to the women in my paintings? Also, almost none.

My work expands from society’s plurality and diversity, and it remains strong pillars of my art. Therefore, I tried to capture each women identity, in this case honouring the physical features and identity of Tracy from Jamaica.

The Jungle

The rendering of me painting other women is my illustrated representation of their existence with admiration and realism in the same proportion.

I like to paint people on their most fragile and vulnerable expression, focusing on a very natural and organic presence. I search for raw, wild and bold beauty. Globally and publicly, women painting women without strains, opacity or pre-conceptions.

Goodness

Art is such an organic form of communication that it is impossible to dissociate it from personal reality. For this reason, each artist paints her own existence. And this is mine. Following my obsession with rendering human connections through the eyes, I painted one of my most familiar gazes, which influence and reshape my feeling of belonging.

Learn more about the artist at jessicaoliveras.com.

Related > Browse portrait and figure workshop videos in the style of contemporary realism here.

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