In 2020, Romina quit her job as a data analyst and moved to Paris. She went with a portfolio of sketches made at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she drew every Sunday, nearly religiously, from 2018 to 2020. Her favorite subject was Degas’s Little Dancer. Alongside classes at the Art Students League of New York, she filled her journals back to back. She was accepted to a drawing program at the Louvre, with figure sessions from life fifteen hours a week, and a one-on-one critique of her drawings each week at the Louvre. There she learned the classical French academic way of drawing and was introduced to the concept of rhetorical geometry.
That winter semester changed her life. She received foundational drawing knowledge and studied French academic art history: Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin, Charles Le Brun, Claude Gillot, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Pierre Subleyras, François Boucher, Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Moreau, and more. The semester coincided with the Louvre’s exhibition marking 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci’s death, still her favorite exhibition of all time.
She wrote the following statement in 2021.
“The drawing doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up.” - Nicolas Boileau Despreaux
"Light is why we build musuems." - My Professor
As a student at Barnard College, I majored in Economics and Social History. The word 'economics' stems from the Greek word, ‘Oikos’ which means ‘Home.” It is within this framework that the classic quarrel over the stewardship of monetary resources versus what it means to be at home on this planet is found. I have studied, sailed by stars across the South Pacific, worked, travelled to the glaciers in Patagonia and heard the thunderous clap of one splitting in two, tripped and fallen many times trying to grasp at what point we fell into a floating world. Should we believe in money, like our parents? Or should we believe in the diversity of nature, or even God, like their parents?
Image: Romina’s first sketch at the Louvre. Inconnu (Unknown Soldier), January 2020, graphite on paper, Galerie des Antiques at the Louvre, Paris, France.
Most recently, I moved to Paris to pursue my passion in art, or to grasp more ‘Knowledge’ which stems from another Greek word ‘Gnosis’ which means ‘Light.’ Although economics and art don’t sound like they go hand-in-hand, “oikos” and “gnosis” are deeply linked, wherein you need gnosis (light) to find the truth, or home (oikos) again. Studying the figure and observing from life is one way to transmit this knowledge. The human body, like this planet, is a transmission of several things like air, fluids, and emotions. I’m interested in these systems of systems in the body and planet, in addition to the different relationships between looking at them.
Image: Marco in the Montmartre Studio, January 2020, graphite and white pencil on toned paper, Paris, France.
There is no internal without the external. Currently, I am inspired by light and movement in figures from the classical for many reasons, including the ability to capture life amid constant flux. Finding the truth in a figure, reporting moments in time is the same thing as reporting light at given moment, which is the medium of visual experience that captivates me and seems to be perspective beyond ordinary sight. I walk through the Roman and Greek Antiquities wing at the Met and Louvre and mentally seek the sense of interior movement and light in paintings and sculptures, these arrangements of value that create rhetorical geometry, that say something larger about the figure, spirit, and illusion. The more I learn about the nature of observation and expression, art is less explained by words and aligns closer to hieroglyphics that can only be deciphered and translated by the eye- the whole composition, idea, coupled with unicorn effects.
Image: Marine Centaur and Silenus, master copy in January 2020, graphite on paper, Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities (Room 17), Louvre, Paris, France.
For instance, it is simply understood that if you separate light and shadow from the eye can find the truth of the figure. On that note, I see negative space as homesickness. It appears to be filled with a thousand meaningless points and feels like waking up in a foreign place—the eyes morphing dark shapes to find some recognizable feature of home. No one has ever looked at a masterpiece and said that's beautiful negative space.
Image: Emma (Morning Light), 2020, graphite on toned paper, Paris, France.
I wanted to solidify my drawing skills because it can serve as a mirror- what your eye observes versus what you arrange within imaginary space. It is the solidity of line that built the genius of the great architect Vitruvian to the decipherment of Linear B to the Rosetta Stone. It is movement too, but we have an incurable need to make the unknown known and grounded. Therefore, we need to distinguish line to derive meaning. It’s not for nothing that King Henry X ordained cursive be made legible when writing hit all time low in the 16th century. People, not just kings, need clarity (implied orderly negative space) to make rational sense of this world we call home.
Image: Marco, 2020, graphite and white pencil on toned paper.
My diverse set of experiences has given me a wide range of interests. For instance, I enjoy mythological subjects coupled with literature, such as the Three Graces because charm, grace, and beauty remind me of the idea mentioned in James Joyce’s novel Finnegan’s Wake. Particularly the creation of triplets wherein two are opposites and one is a combination of both. This concept is found in religion too: God, the son, and the holy spirit. It was the alternation of opposites (light/current) that enabled Nikola Tesla to harness electricity. Therefore, I look past the ideal to find the other side of the coin- the opposite, and combination of both entities. It is these sides that beg for color, expression, and honesty. For instance, I am inspired by the work of Elizabeth Peyton, who was inspired by John Donne's Newbattle Portrait (1596), a melancholic depiction of the poet and what he called the "picture of mine that is taken from shadows." The inscription reads "Illuminate our darkness, lady."
Image: The Three Graces, master copy in 2020, graphite on paper, Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities (Room 17), Louvre, Paris, France.
This is fitting in today’s modern world and I’m interested in making sense of the chaos, and perhaps that’s why I love the turbulence and movement of Adolphe Willette's Parce Domine and why I can sketch Venus de Arles and think the apple she was meant to be holding was not just the Judgement of Paris but the beaux ideal (which was definitely not organic, gmo free). Similarly, my love of sailing influences my appreciation for the language of Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, and Samuel Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, specifically the dualism of death versus living life-in-death. Today people are groping in the shadows for hope and I believe my view on painting looks past the exhaust fumes, chemical haze, and plague that consumes our floating world to find hope. Art is, indeed, the highest form of hope. Next, I will study painting because “line properly understood is color.” Like the color between these letters, white. Gnosis (light) did it. I have a reflex that is just as natural as someone making sense of an anagram to draw and paint. I’ve been told that you know you’ve mastered a language if you can dream in it. I like to think it’s when you can make someone laugh too. In Paris, I’ve made no French people laugh (perhaps at me for me for my lack of French) but I want the opportunity to master painting as a language amidst today’s negative space, to show all the love that exists within the world one day.
Image: Venus of Arles, master copy in 2020, charcoal on toned paper, Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities, Louvre, Paris, France.
I dream this life-long journey continues in New York. I will be the motion, the uncertainty, the openness and positivity, and the moments of reflection and understanding that art yields. For it is only when I gain these incredible wonders, I find a little more of myself, a grain of sand in an hourglass made of “Oikos” and “Gnosis.”
Image: Peter, 2021, graphite and white pencil on toned paper, Paris, France.
Image 1: Inconnu (Unknown Soldier), January 2020, graphite on paper, Galerie des Antiques, Louvre, Paris, France. Romina’s first sketch at the Louvre.
Image 2: Marco in the Montmartre Studio, January 2020, graphite and white pencil on toned paper, Paris, France.
Image 3: Marine Centaur and Silenus (master copy), January 2020, graphite on paper, Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities (Room 17), Louvre, Paris, France.
Image 4: Emma (Morning Light), January 2020, graphite on toned paper, Paris, France.
Image 5: Marco, 2020, graphite and white pencil on toned paper, Paris, France.
Image 6: The Three Graces (master copy), January 2020, graphite on paper, Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities (Room 17), Louvre, Paris, France.
Image 7: Venus of Arles (master copy), 2020, charcoal on toned paper, Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities, Louvre, Paris, France.
Image 8: Peter, 2021, graphite and white pencil on toned paper, Paris, France.
Images 10 and 11: Galentine’s Day in Paris (embellished master copies), 2020, graphite and red pencil on paper, Paris, France.