Below is an article which was written by my friend and fellow artist Jaymee Weinreich which will be published next week.
Artist Glenda Santiago
The Emergence of a Butterfly
Written by Jaymee Weinreich"Paintings featuring women as goddesses, dancers, musicians, shoes, and tropical flowers sprinkled with butterflies, and birds to symbolize the freeing of the soul are found in the paintings of Artist Glenda Santiago.
Glenda is a good friend. On occasion we paint together out in the rain forest and, very often, I might be one of the first to see her newest creations. We’ve coordinated a number of art shows together, the latest a woman’s exhibit called Perception Personified where one of the paintings each artist submitted for the show was a self-portrait. Glenda's self portrait was a 48" x 36" combination oil and encaustic painting featuring herself as a Venus with peacocks on both sides of her. Her expression is serious which several people said isn't her but people who really know her understand that it is.
Glenda is in her element when it comes to art, but it had been a life long journey to get to the point where she is today. When I asked her when did her inclination for art begin she immediately recounted to me the time when she entered one of those comic book contests in order to see if you could be eligible for art school. When the school contacted her mother she informed them that Glenda was only five years old and they couldn't afford to send her to art school. Glenda said that she remembered feeling discouraged at this news. She continued creating art and, along with her artistic endeavors, she was surrounded by musicians. Her father was a popular country western singer and composer in Texas. Her mother often sang in night clubs when they were living in Miami.
But all this ended when her mother died while Glenda was still a young girl. Art was put away and music was no longer a part of her life. After high school she went the practical road, got married, had a son, got a degree in accounting, but eventually Glenda began to change all that. She is a perfect example of that old saying that you cannot deny what you really want to be or what you really are. She told me, "It wasn't until I was thirty that I finally had the courage to follow my life dream”. She started taking classes in art and eventually graduated from Florida International University with a Bachelor in Fine Art and a Minor in Art History.
But due to another unfortunate event, Glenda again put aside her art. "My father died the night I was hanging my show for my graduating thesis BFA. After that I didn't paint again for two years." But eventually Glenda began again to blossom as an artist. Then in 2002, Glenda and her husband, Julio, moved to Puerto Rico. “It wasn't until I moved here that I began to take my art seriously. The reason for that was because I got involved in the East End Art Guild and met people that encouraged me. My husband also encouraged me and now I can't imagine doing anything else!".
Glenda admits that being in Puerto Rico changed the palette of her color choices tremendously. "I used to use lots of neutrals, like browns, beiges, and black but here everything is bright, lush, and lots of green so in order to capture the richness of the environment I changed my color palette." Mainly working in oil and pastels, Glenda has recently started to experiment with encaustics, a medium that comes down to us from ancient Greece and is the process where color is added to bees wax and then fixed with heat. "I love the texture that it allows me to create and even more the spontaneity of the stroke. It stays exactly as I laid it because it dries immediately. It also allows me the freedom to add mixed media like my writings, collage, leaves, beads and other things."
Yes, the encaustics are interesting but what is most interesting is what Glenda likes to portray in her paintings. A very important subject for her is the women that she features and most interesting is why she paints them. "My paintings of women help me define myself as a woman. With them, I search for who I am, but also I explore the roles of women throughout history". Shoes are another subject explored in her work. "To me it is a symbol of a person's identity." This is evident in a painting she calls "If you Could Walk in Mine" where she features a pair of brown shoes in a rustic room. You can't help but form a picture in your mind of who that person is.
Sprinkled through many of Glenda's paintings are butterflies and birds. "The whole thing about the cocoon and how the butterfly emerges. This to me signifies the attainment of freedom of the soul," she tells me. So in a sense Glenda paints self portraits and like the butterfly Glenda has emerged from her cocoon doing what she really wants to do. How more beautiful could a butterfly be?
Glenda is now President of the East End Art Guild of Puerto Rico,
www.eeag.org, will soon be in a group show in Vienna, Austria, and in a book featuring 100 outstanding artists. See her web site at
www.glendasantiago.com and read about her progress at
www.glendasantiago.blogspot.com "
Jaymee's website and artwork can be seen at
www.weinreichstudio.com
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