Today we’d like to introduce you to Beatriz Ledesma.
Beatriz, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Chicago has been my home for almost 40 years. I was exposed to the arts from very early in life as both of my parents were singers and my father was also a carpenter and community organizer. Per growing up within a Mennonite family, I was engulfed in community life. This environment was conducive to have a social-political understanding of the world at a very early age.
We lived in an old house with a huge front and back yard, full of fruit trees, and flower plants of a different kind. This contributed to the development of my imagination and creative energy that manifested in “live singing performances” on top of a yard bench, scribbles with color pencils on any piece of paper and sculpting weird forms with mud, and getting fake nails with petals from the many flowers my mother cultivated.
My father’s community work and Mennonite ideas informed my understanding of social class and injustice in the world. So, it was not surprising that in my teen years, I was working in the slums of Buenos Aires as a literary teacher and in soup kitchens as part of The Movement of Priests for the Third World –Movimiento de Sacerdotes para el Tercer Mundo — (a tendency among the Catholic Church in Argentina with a strong political and social participation. It was an important venue for social action between 1967 and 1976) while working on a degree in elementary education.
For a year or two, I was enrolled in private piano lessons but when the time came to seek refuge from the social-political chaos of the 1970s in my country (the so-called “dirty war”), painting and drawing became my outlet. I enrolled at the Institute de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires who hosted me until departing to the USA at the end of the 1970s.
I arrived in NYC first but it was Chicago who offered me a volunteer job as an art teacher and court advocate at Latino Youth Alternative High School in Pilsen. So, I came to Chicago.
My interest in combining education, psychology, and art, led me to the School of the Art Institute where I got a masters in art therapy and in fine arts at the beginning of the 1980s.
Because I did not want to become an “academic artist” (art teacher @ academia), I worked hard in developing an art psychotherapy private practice from where I could support myself and my artistic career from. In 1990, I incorporated Ledesma Studio, a combination of art studio and psychotherapy office.
My interest in the manifestation of the unconscious through the art-making process and its healing qualities mobilized me to obtain further training in the psychotherapy process at the University of Chicago (2001) and then, obtained a doctoral degree in social work at the Institute for Clinical Social Work (2009).
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
Through my work, I take a closer look at the emotional impact of displacement in marginalized populations and to examine the symbolic language of indigenous peoples.
Using symbols — realistic and primitive tribal imagery placed in a dreamlike composition with heavily saturated colors —I seek to paint and to recreate the spiritual world of native populations and the emotional reality of marginalized peoples.
I do enjoy painting with oils on wood or canvas and I also enjoy watercolors. They allow for layers to be applied to create depth as well as softness. My drawings are mostly with a combination of materials such as graphite, ink, and pastels and the energy on them is raw.
For the past three years, I illustrated books on the adventure of a very intelligent cat named Hodge, who used to live in the Fine Arts Building used bookstore owned by a friend of mine. I had a lot of fun with it and I feel that initiated me into being an illustrator.
I am also known for my mandala drawings where I use color markers and color pencils.
My work invites contemplation. I aim to encourage the viewer to enter into an inner dialogue with it, to get immersed in the colors, and to seek a deeper understanding of self my thinking about the meaning of the symbolic imagery.
The stereotype of a starving artist scares away many potentially talented artists from pursuing art – any advice or thoughts about how to deal with the financial concerns an aspiring artist might be concerned about?
The path of the artist is a hard one – it calls for determination, focus, concentration, discipline, and thinking outside the box.
I would advise to develop a parallel career to depend on financially; a career that they love, that increases their energy so they can have plenty of it to work on their art practice
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I have a solo exhibit in October at Oliva Gallery – 3816 W Armitage Ave Chicago IL 60647. People can make an appt. to visit my studio. They also can send me a request via email to include them on my monthly enewsletter, and/or follow me on social media to get updates.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.beatrizledesmastudio.com
- Phone: 773.561.0825
- Email: beatriz@ledesmastudio.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatrizld/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ledesmastudio/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Beatrizld
- Other: www.linkedin.com/in/beatrizledesma
Image Credit:
Photographer: Matthew Tolzmann
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