INTERVIEW WITH MARINA BENITO

The artist was born in Madrid where she also studied Fine Arts. She spent a year in Italy specializing in graphic design and is currently living and working between Lisbon and Madrid. The creative has worked as both graphic designer, cultural manager and with many small brands, providing drawings and illustrations, . Now she is fully dedicated to her own projects and creativity you can find here.

Your greatest inspirations or influences?

I find inspiration in observation. I love to analyze and depict everyday life, searching for the beauty that comes within authenticity in everyday situations, music, series and movies. I always try to keep up with exhibitions, creative events and street markets. I´m a  big fan of flea markets! I have come to develop some works on language and nature. In this sense, colours and textures are a big part of my artwork.

Tell us a bit about your creative process? Work you are most proud of, things you are looking forward to this year?

Although I try, I must confess that I do not have a work routine. Some days there is no time to stain a brush with paint, since the most important thing for me is to sort my usually chaotic ideas. This is where it comes to my botanical artwork, which helped me to relax and calm my brain and became such a great discovery: little by little more and more people started to follow me on social media loving my plants creations.

Of course, I spend many hours dedicated to it: the creative process usually begins with writing: key ideas or concepts, analyzing them and starting sketching in order to get the final painting. This process starts in the morning, after playing some music and taking advantage of the natural light.

How has this year changed your creativity or how you see the world changing moving forward?

I think I have dedicated most of my time to workshops which started about a year ago. I believe everyone can paint by learning the right technique if only you give them some simple guidelines and key concepts.  

I enjoy teaching these techniques so much that I managed to adapt them to the online format due to the health crisis, so they can join from home. One of the projects that I have been most excited about lately has been illustrating the “flowers street market" by Vogue magazine.

https://www.vogue.es/especiales/2020/mercado-de-las-flores/

Looking forward, I would love to be able to unify in the same space my favorite areas of work: developing my own creations, conducting creative workshops and cultural managing, which would ideally take place in the same multidisciplinary open space where everyone is welcome!

Anything else?

 Reuse, recycle, reduce!!