Daily Inspiration: Meet Natalia Lopez

Today we’d like to introduce you to Natalia Lopez.

Hi Natalia, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for sharing your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
Growing up in Queen Creek, Arizona, I was heavily surrounded by the symbolism of the desert and Hispanic culture. Living in a mixed-racial household, I could surround myself with many different forms of art, and my family greatly encouraged me to explore different types of art within my own culture and beyond. This encouragement would go on to help me to form my art style later. My childhood consisted of living with my parents and my dad’s extended family on a cattle and goat farm here in town. Being surrounded by livestock inspired me to utilize a lot of iconography of animals in my art, which I continue to utilize as subject matter to this day. In discovering myself as an artist in my early years, I would focus a lot on fantasy-themed art and find a love for movies and TV shows that focused a lot on escapism or themes of surrealism. This would go on to heavily influence my art both then and now. Jim Henson movies were some of my favorites and almost any movie from the 80s – 90s involving mythical creatures. As a teenager, I attended and graduated from Queen Creek High School. I was given the wonderful opportunity to explore different types of art such as fashion design and marketing. I was also allowed to explore the arts through the Art program that Queen Creek High School has, which was very small when I was a student. In my early college years, I thought I would be a marketing major, but my love for art overcame that, and I decided to dive headfirst and pursue the arts as a career field ever since the spring of 2019. This ended up being one of the best decisions I have ever made, and although I am still looking for my forever career, I don’t think I made the wrong decision in pursuing the arts.

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
For me, it has been a roller coaster of a road, not smooth or rough, but with many ups and downs. Sometimes you have a high peak, and you feel like you’ve got a perfect streak of people supporting your art and what you do, and then you hit a plateau, and it feels like you’re this spec in the world of social media, and nobody knows who you are or what you do. I feel like the main struggle for artists is marketing themselves, which is ironic since I wanted to be a social media marketing major before I decided to pursue a career in the arts. Sometimes, creating is the easiest part, but finding people who love what you do and want to support you can be the most infuriating yet exhilarating experience as an art maker.

Looking for a community among fellow artists and networking has been my biggest strength as an artist in helping me pursue my career. You tend to hear a lot of nos or “I’ll come back later,” and of course, they never come back later, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone who knows exactly what you’re feeling get you back up and tell you to keep going. Having creative friends to help combat the negativity is the most important part. It is important to have a support system that knows exactly how it feels to be turned down and provides a pick-me-up. You can’t always be your biggest supporter; sometimes, you need help! Having a good support system that reinstates that what you create does make a difference in the world and does make people happy works wonders for creatives!

I appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Currently, I am focusing on being heavily influenced by the world of surrealism. For those unfamiliar with the term surrealism, it stems from artists like Frida Kahlo and Salvador Dali, who focus primarily on artworks that were heavily influenced by dream-like states or things that don’t quite make sense. I find this genre of artwork particularly fascinating because, to me, dreams have been something that has always heavily influenced the way that I see the world, and it has trickled its way into my art style. In my more recent works, I have been combining surrealism with aspects of human body parts and animal characteristics, as well as a heavy influence on the desert scenes of Arizona. A specific iconography I have been implementing in many of my artwork lately is eyes and eyeballs with winged eyeliner makeup. This has become a little signature for me, as I see myself in these eyes, as my makeup choices reflect these painted eyes. Eyes have always been something I tend to hyper-fixate on in any living being I encounter. I find it very interesting that animals and humans can almost speak through the eyes without looking at the rest of the face for any expression. Eyes can tell a story with just simple movement or minimal expression, and I find that so enthralling, and I think that is why I gravitate towards painting them. I want to focus more on creating artwork that combines the desert, my heritage and culture, and surrealism with a Modern twist because I feel like it’s important to listen to my intuition and keep focusing on the things that not only I like but hopefully open the door to people who may not have considered it being something they enjoy.

We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
COVID-19 was what I would like to consider art jail for myself; although I had all the time in the world, it seemed to create and make new work, and I entered a plateau. I was at a point where I only made artwork necessary for working on my degree and didn’t really make any art for myself. I think the pandemic, specifically the lockdown, really put depression on many artists. Still, it also created an environment for others to flourish, and though I wish I could say I was one of those people, I was not.

I think the Covid pandemic proves that even though the world stops and you have time to work on the things that you would normally enjoy, it doesn’t always create the perfect environment for you to be inspired and create. I was only making art pertinent to assignments and suffered quite a bit during the pandemic. I lost my job, which forced me to live off of my savings, which wasn’t very much since I was a full-time student, and created this depression I would be stuck in for a long time. Being isolated from friends and loved ones took a toll on my creativity.

Another unfortunate element of the pandemic that I’m sure many people can resonate with was that I suffered the fatal loss of a family member due to COVID-19, which put me at a standstill with my art. Sometimes grief manifests differently for people, and I know that sometimes it can result in an unforeseen form of inspiration, but for me, I felt like it sucked all the goodness out of me, and I didn’t feel like doing anything. I had suffered such a tremendous loss on top of all the other issues with the pandemic, and art was the last thing on my mind. I felt like my art was neglected for a long time, and it also took me a while to get back into doing what I love. Everyone’s only human, and you can only force yourself to set aside your feelings for so long until it just explodes. You must give yourself time to heal and return to normalcy or the new normal. Sometimes, the acclamation takes a few days or months, and I feel it’s essential to focus on yourself and take time for yourself so your future self can improve.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ailatan.art?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
• Other: Tiktok @natlopezart