By Fran Schiavo

Lola Picó, an artist from Barcelona, Spain, has always been driven by her creativity. She worked for many years as a makeup artist and stylist in fashion, advertising, TV, and film, where she specialized in special effects. 

Over the years, Picó studied Contact Dance Improvisation, Butoh, African Dance, and other styles of contemporary and experimental dance, exploring body movement and expressing her creativity forms of movement.

At the same time, because of her attraction to color, textures, and light, Picó “played as a painter” without seeing herself as an artist. 

At age 29, feeling that her life between the catwalks and film sets no longer made sense, she took a year and a half sabbatical and began to travel the world. She stayed six months at an ashram in India to learn how to meditate and discover her own creativity. 

Later during her sabbatical, she visited Mexico and fell in love with the country and adopted it as her home. In the thirty years since, she has devoted herself entirely to developing her creativity in dance, human development, meditation, and art. She has held various exhibitions throughout the Americas with the curator Edgar Mizrahi. 

Her focus on painting was driven by missing “the textures, the colors, the brightness, the shadows, the light, the brushes…and the great impulse of plunging, once again, into the white abyss of the canvas between colors, powders, acrylics, exploring the great mystery of life.” 

She asks, “Creativity: where does it come from, how is it born in oneself, how is it communicated? Is it creation or expression of what already exists?” And she answers, “Painting, for me, is supported by dance and meditation. Using colors, pigments, brushes, acrylics, and pencils, my inner being comes to light and…there I exist. From my internal silence, I allow myself to express and create a set of visual elements, silent and simple, where color, light, shadow, texture, and lines simplify, to capture the essence of who they are.”

Picó has called San Miguel de Allende her home for 20 years. She is represented by Magenta gallery on Zacateros 26 and shares her Art Studio-ShowRoom with the artist Harry Ally in Quebrada 18-B. Her works are in private collections around the world including the United States, Canada, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Argentina, Holland, and Mexico.

Magenta is Health First certified, and welcomes you to explore works by artists Steve Ellis, Pat Miller, Lola Picó, Fran Schiavo, Cathy Taylor, and Fernando Pérez Vázquez. Stop in to meet with Picó and learn more about her inspirations and processes Tues. through Sat., 11am-4pm