Interview with Núria Farré

For all of you who missed the interviews to our favorite artists, here comes the one we have made to Núria Farré, a painter with an impressive resume that grows even more with her humility, a very young woman who overflows with talent. Let’s go there!

Did you draw as a child? When did you start drawing and what did you feel when you did it?

I have always drawn. I guess I started like all creatures drawing balls with plastidecors and little by little I have been getting more sophisticated. I do remember that my friends would go to the playground to play, but they wouldn’t let me, so I stayed at my grandmother’s house and all I had were legos, tape, paper and cases full of colors, so basically for me it was playing. Drawing made the time fly by, it made me concentrate a lot and it relaxed me, it was like playing and then the adults really liked the drawing so it was all positive, that’s why I never stopped doing it.

Who or what introduced you to the art world?

My aunt’s father-in-law was a painter, although I never got to meet him, and my paternal grandfather was an amateur painter, so, in my family, art and painting are something that is well regarded and I have always been encouraged to continue delving deeper and learning.

Tell us something about your childhood in relation to the art world.

When I was little, more than drawing, I liked tape, that transparent adhesive tape for sticking papers. I used to do real feats with tape. If someone in my family had to take care of me, they had to have several rolls of tape and a whole pack of printer paper. I made dollhouses, dresses, postcards and all kinds of things. I think my initiation into art started out more focused on building than drawing.

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In PLOM we have a series of yours drawn from photographs of your childhood, how did you feel reproducing them?

When I went through those albums with the intention of painting them I was in tears looking at the pictures. It was not a sad thing but yes, I was assuming that all that had already happened and I realized that I had grown up. In the end I realized that what I had to do was a kind of Bildungsroman, a kind of learning novel in which I would explain how I have evolved and relate that important transition from childhood to adulthood.

Do you believe in the Superpowers of Art? How would you describe them?

Of course! Art has the ability to channel emotions that are difficult for us to understand into something figurative that we can understand more easily. In the end, art helps us to understand our mind and our environment and to connect with others.

When and how do you like to work?

I like to work alone and for many hours at a time. Sometimes I like to listen to the radio, sometimes I listen to music and sometimes I am completely silent, it depends on my mood.

Where do you think your style comes from?

I believe that style is always born from the artist’s personality, it cannot be separated. In my case my style comes from being a very perfectionist person but a bit lazy, which seems incompatible but it is not. In my paintings, the most important areas are usually perfectly finished with a lot of detail while the rest is fresher, unfinished. That gives it different levels of finish, depth and reading, but it’s not intentional, it’s just the way I am!

Your works are very introspective and personal, do you think you want to express something through them or that they manifest themselves through you?

When I was a teenager I didn’t know how to explain what I felt because at home we didn’t talk much about feelings, in fact, I learned to talk about feelings when I was older. As a child I learned to express myself and tell the most intimate things only with drawings, now I do it completely intentional and when I feel I have something to tell I do it with a pictorial project.

What are you working on right now?

Now I am deepening in the series that you have in Plom, I want to tell how I have learned to be a person through paintings that speak of memories of my childhood. I am working in very large sizes taking those memories that sometimes we consider unimportant to very transcendent sizes that give them the importance they deserve.

Do you think children like your work? Why do you think so?

This is a project that children like because they see images of children like themselves playing and scenes that they themselves may have experienced. I think they feel comfortable with those images because they are familiar to them. I have a seven year old student who comes to the workshop to learn painting and when I am painting a picture she always gives me some advice “leave it like this” or “I wouldn’t do that to her” and I always listen to her because I believe that if she manages to connect with what I want to transmit then I have succeeded.

What interests you more: the opinion of an influential critic or that of an 8-year-old child?

Let’s see, that’s a trick question… haha…
I’m equally interested and equally uninterested. I mean, the opinions of my work interest me as long as I believe that the person, be it a child or a great art critic, speaks having understood what I want to convey. But as I already told you, I have a 7 year old advisor to whom I pay a lot of attention.

What do you think of PLOM Gallery?

I think Plom is a gallery with a unique personality and a beautiful idea behind it. When I was little, I used to walk around gracefully with my parents, so if I were little again, I would definitely ask my parents to take me to see the gallery every time.

Do you want to add anything?

Now that I am revisiting my childhood and adolescence with this project, I have realized that the worst part of the movie is admitting in front of adults that what you want to be when you grow up is an Artist. When I was 13 years old I wanted to be a guitarist in a rock band and was learning to play guitar. One day an adult asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I told him I wanted to be a rock guitarist, the adult laughingly told me that was fine for my dreams, but in reality what I wanted to be. I stopped playing guitar because I understood that it was impossible to dedicate myself to that. When I got a little older and wanted to be an artist, I didn’t tell anyone so they wouldn’t ruin my guitar again. I think the biggest favor we can do for children, and that’s something I think Plom does very well, is to accompany them in their creative process and encourage them to be the best artists they can be.

And from PLOM Gallery we don’t know what to add because Núria has been as transparent as those zeal tapes with which it all began. Well, lie, we want to thank her for the time she has taken to answer our questions with so much affection and, above all, we want to thank her for not letting anyone spoil her guitar again, because the works that are born from her are a real gift!