Close Window

Cecilia Lostaunau

Cecilia Lostaunau began her career in art at Lima's prestigious Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, and then continued studying painting at the Byam Shaw School of Art and Chelsea School of Art in London during the 1980s. Since her return to Peru, she has lived in several cities, exhibiting her work from time to time and exploring her artistry through a variety of techniques, ranging from oils to pastels to watercolor.

"My work is abstract expressionist," Cecelia says. "In reality, my art is part figuration, and, in a broader sense, the practical representation of some British painters who have been grouped in the so-called 'London school.' Their work has its roots in realism but is characterized by a great freedom of form that could be interpreted as pure expressionistic intention. Here all this hierarchical order of front plane and background, the positive and negative, the important and unimportant, the near and distant has been broken. This perception of life fascinates me; I believe it can best be described as ‘individual conscience.’

"There is another reason for managing media. It makes expressivity discover its strongest accent. This is through the decision to resolve volume as a plastic mass, with a visual weight constructed through a demarcation of lines, of lights and shadows, and especially by color.

"Color, for me, is a detonating factor in images. To think in terms of color, there must be imagination. Without imagination, one can never become a good colorist. I think it is necessary to copy nature with imagination – colors must be thought out, dreamed of, and imagined.

"Through my work, I try more than anything to transmit my feelings, motivated always by my own life. I hope you appreciate and enjoy my work as much as I do."