Meet Gisela A. Lazarte

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gisela A. Lazarte. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Gisela, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I think it comes with being Venezuelan, most of us have to develop this quality growing up in constant uncertainty and change, to say the least. Then of course, migrating brings a whole other set of challenges and adversity that you have to overcome and therefore strengthen your resilience. I’m the daughter of immigrants as well, so you could say resilience is almost in my DNA. Nevertheless, I think it’s an ability that you can grow and develop by allowing yourself to take more risks and embracing feeling uncomfortable from time to time if it means getting you somewhere closer to where you want to be. Even though I think resilience may be ingrained in me, there have been many times in my life where I’ve felt like I’m not going to make it through something, where it seems too difficult or overwhelming. Then life does its thing and pushes you there, and you discover you were able to get through it once again in the end and are only stronger and wiser for it.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My name is Gisela A. Lazarte and I’m an abstract artist based in New York City. My work is driven by exploration shaped by memories, feelings, subconscious thoughts and sensory stimuli all at once. I often like to call my process a meditation in action, where intention and intuition converge. It’s a deeply personal approach that leads to a wide range of subjects, from everyday observations to questions about identity, belonging, and my experiences as both a second- and first-generation immigrant. As I mentioned before, while I was born and raised in Venezuela, my parents originally emigrated from Peru. Other than Venezuela, I’ve lived in Spain, briefly in Peru, and I’ve been based in New York since 2016.

My path has taken many turns and my background is in communication and film, which greatly inform my practice to this day. My paintings place a special emphasis on conveying movement and exploring how sound and music influence our rendering of images.

To me, the most exciting aspect of my work is the freedom of expression and interpretation that abstraction provides. My pieces look to encourage an expansive dialogue, prompted by subjective feelings and thoughts, between the viewer and the work. I believe that art should be an active experience, not just for me but for the viewer as well. This way, I like to think the work can create paths that bridge connections for our own human experiences, beyond words and language barriers.

I also work on a commission-basis, which is a collaborative process where each piece presents a unique challenge in converging visions with a collector. While my process stems from personal experience, there’s always common ground, that connection between our humanity in the work. I spend time with collectors exploring past works and looking to understand the thoughts and feelings these pieces spark in them, as well as those they hope to experience with their commissioned work, to find that bridge. It’s a multipart and nuanced process that always invigorates my practice.

I’ve exhibited my work at galleries and art fairs in New York throughout the last few years, and it’s always a rewarding and enriching experience to get to learn the varied ways different people experience the work and how it speaks to them. My paintings are also available directly from my studio and I will be releasing new work soon before the holidays. Leading up to a new release, whether on a show in person or online, is always a very exciting and stressful period — and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The first quality would definitely be resilience, which we touched on before. You have to be willing to be uncomfortable, take challenges, face uncertainty, make mistakes and continue pushing through to be able to develop an art practice, also as a business.

Curiosity has also been key. It has always been part of my personality, but it can be developed and ignited through practice. Pay attention to your surroundings, notice the little things around you and how they make you feel. Specifically for an art practice, explore everything and anything you can think of early on in terms of materials, styles, themes. Action leads to more action, so when you’re feeling stuck or uninspired, just make yourself try anything on paper/canvas, a piece of cardboard, whatever you can get your hands on. I think these little actions can lead to greater discoveries that you can only unfold through exploration.

Lastly, I would say optimism. You have to believe things will work out in the end. That doesn’t mean just jump into anything and assume everything will be fine of course; do you research but listen to your intuition as well. I’ve made a lot of life-changing decisions that, while they were not impulsive, they also were not necessarily practical or understood by everyone, but I took a bet on myself and trusted what I believed I had to do and wanted to go for. Some may call it delusion, and that’s fine, I agree that you have to be a little delusional sometimes and deeply believe that things will work out for you, while you pair that delusion with your work and action, making informed decisions. A few of those decisions I’ve made haven’t panned out exactly the way I hoped or totally backfired on me. But that’s where resilience comes in. You take your time to process and mourn your losses, and then pivot and carry on.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

My biggest challenge currently, and for a while now, is learning to navigate both developing my art practice and growing my business in parallel. Finding a balance between the two and not burning out in the process is something I think I’m still figuring out.

Social media and the internet have made it possible for artists to be independent and find their audiences in a pool conformed by virtually the whole world. And while this has been a game changer, it poses its own challenges having to wear many hats at once to be successful. A lot of us are not natural salespeople, for instance, which you need to be able to develop, at least on some level if you want to sell your work on your own. Having some marketing skills or knowledge are also key. You have to be both an artist, whose work gets stronger and stronger with time, and an entrepreneur.

To resolve or overcome this challenge, time management has proven to be crucial for me. It’s tricky because the nature of this business is dynamic, so no week is exactly like the other. However, having a baseline routine and some sort of schedule, a rough plan for the day, the week, the month, and even the year, is helping me navigate this much better. Knowing which tasks or activities are essential or urgent versus which allow for flexibility time-wise can solve a lot of issues or unnecessary time wasted figuring out how to pivot when unexpected things come up—as they usually do.

Whenever I fall out of this practice of flexible planning the difference is palpable, because this also includes identifying the personal activities or tasks that are non-negotiable in terms of my daily functioning and well-being. When I start noticing signs of burnout, taking even a couple of days off can change everything. For me, both my brain and my body start telling me I’m overdue for a break. When I don’t listen, they make sure to speak louder and the work suffers for it as well. It can be easier said than done when you’re working towards a goal, but I’m a strong believer that you’re better off taking the break, even just for a day. Both your mind, body, soul and your work will thank you for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.galazarte.com
• Instagram: @laz__arte
• Other: email: [email protected]

Image Credits

All images by Gisela A. Lazarte