Keep an eye on Paula Lisbona: the talent taking the art world by storm with her wild brushstrokes

Paula Lisbona (Torre del Mar, 1992) is making her mark on the art scene with a wild and free brushstroke that does not seek the perfect form. Quite the opposite. She is drawn to the grotesque, to deformity and to that blurring of the line between what appears to be and what actually is. Layer upon layer, she creates characters drawn from folk tales, classical paintings or her own imagination. She builds them up and breaks them down until they become beings distinct from the originals, with a story of their own: the one the viewer chooses to give them. Her aim is to generate ‘tension’ with the image, pushing it to the limit to a point "where you don’t know whether what you’re seeing is a finger or a stroke". "To break the representation," she sums up.

And it works. In the last three months alone, the young artist from Malaga’s contemporary expressionist work has won an award and secured several exhibition opportunities. Paula Lisbona took first place last July at the MálagaCrea Young Visual Arts Exhibition with ¿Es El Trofeo Más Raro Que Has Visto? (Is This The Strangest Trophy You’ve Ever Seen?). Her work is currently on display at Espacio Salinas, in an exhibition curated by Noelia García Banderas, and from 15 October it will also be on display at the Sala Chema Cobo in the Faculty of Fine Arts, where she reinterprets Picasso through her own lens thanks to a grant from the Peter and Waltraud Betsche Foundation. In December, she will also be making the move to Barcelona to take part in a group exhibition at the Seltz Gallery. “This world is very tough; many people lose hope. When someone offers you an opportunity like this, it’s wonderful,” says Lisbona.

She speaks whilst surrounded by the ten canvases hanging in the charming art gallery tucked away in the Palacio Salinas, a space that takes visitors by surprise at the back of the Temporánea Concept Shop. She usually works in large formats, with paintings that can even measure three metres, but here Paula Lisbona has forced herself to paint on a smaller scale, to ‘zoom in’ on the scenes in her mind and focus all her attention on the faces. "I actually came to enjoy it, because it was calmer, more intimate," explains the young artist. When she works on a large scale, she admits, there is much more movement, more energy. Sometimes even too much."‘I’ve had to learn to control the force of my brushstrokes. I’ve gradually tamed it over time, because it’s always come out with a lot of intensity." A vitality that is evident in her thick, bold strokes, and in the intense textures and nuances that make up the piece.

That is why what we see at Espacio Salinas, she says, is a ‘rarity’. Accustomed to creating a narrative in those large paintings, with figures intermingled with landscapes and animals, in this exhibition everything is focused on a face, on a single gesture. And it is at these close quarters that the gazes take centre stage: some are defiant, others melancholic and pensive. “It’s as if I were freezing the image at a moment when that person is experiencing a latent emotion,” she explains.

But Piel de Mantequilla is not without her usual points of reference. The world of fairy tales that has had such a profound influence on her makes an appearance, with nods to Little Red Riding Hood. “Ever since I was little, I’ve had a vivid imagination, and one way I used to escape reality was by making things up and telling stories. When I started working, painting led me down that path, like something that draws you in, like an obsession". But she also looks to the masters, as in Prostituta de Rojo – the largest piece in this collection – inspired by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street with Red Streetwalker. Her colour palette, too, exhibits a certain consistency across all her works, with a predominance of flesh tones, reds and greens, alongside areas of the canvas that are completely devoid of colour.

And she has only just started out in the art world. It was only a year ago that she completed her Master’s in Production at the University of Malaga. Before that, she tried her hand at biology and graphic design in the hope of finding a more stable career, but she knew she would end up studying Fine Art. “I’ve always been very concerned about what other people think, and with painting I can do whatever I like regardless of what they think,” she concludes.