When I first meet Naomi Cordero, I feel that I have somehow met her before. After our first five minutes, I figure out what it is. No, I haven’t been in her presence previously; it is her “soul children” who I recognize.
“When I create my ‘portraits,’’’ she says, “they all come from within me. I don’t create my art; it creates me.”
"Cordero," the persona of Naomi Cordero, the artist, always knew she had a gift for art. Though creating art for thirty years, it wasn’t until ten years ago, however, that she devoted herself full time to her work.
“I paint every single day. I work five to six hours a day.”
The process is free-form with the artist not having any notion of what will end up as the completed piece. She believes each of the “portraits,” all women with elongated faces and large expressive eyes, come from her intuition. It is those eyes that I see reflected when I meet Cordero.
“I have had people say to me, ‘she’ looks like you. No matter what color the hair or the eyes. In a sense, my paintings are intuitively and psychologically stylized expressions of my soul.’’
Her art does typify the phrase: “The eyes are the mirror to the soul.”
It takes her about 2 ½ months to finish one of her portraits. For public display, she has 24 Cordero faces in her collection – portraits that she calls her "soul children" named Giselle’s Hat and Farewell Dublin. Seven of them are on display through Sept. 15 at the Art Fusion Galleries in Wynwood.
Empress of the Sea, Cordero’s largest "face" yet at 60X72, is on exhibit at the Art Fusion Galleries.
Farewell Dublin
She’s created her largest yet at 60X72, which will get its first showing at the Art Fusion exhibit. The work, Empress of the Sea, was created in oils and gold leaf. “It is pretty surreal to see a face that big,” she says.
Oil and mixed media are her mediums of choice. After many layers of loose and expressive brushstrokes of oil colors, the portraits begin to reveal themselves among striking and dynamic color combinations.
No matter what the end result, the process always begins the same, she says. “I take my palette knife and start throwing some colors on the canvas. At the beginning, however, I’m just starting out and I’m not sure where I’m going. I don’t have a road map. I don’t see the piece. I have to let my mind be totally empty and clear. “
Though mainly self-taught, the Palm Beach Gardens resident began as a sculptor, working under the tutelage of Muriel Kaplan at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach.
“I had no formal art training,” she says. “I took a sculpture class for eight weeks, and I took off. I remember Muriel telling me that she had seen people that had been sculpting for 20 years, but that in just the short time I had been working, I had taken off. She said that I had a gift.”
Burt Diener, former President of the Art Students League in New York City, called her “naturally gifted.”
When she turned her attention to painting, she used it as a release. Trained as a nurse, Cordero was working with Alzheimer’s patients. “I’d come home and paint and paint for hours. I found that I loved color and that creating faces in sculpture led me to realize that I was drawn to creating faces with paint.”
Natasha
William Braemer, director of Art Fusion Galleries in the Wynwood Arts District, calls Cordero’s works “brilliant.” Her combination of surrealism blended with realism creates works that are “whimsical and full of fantasy, yet there’s a sense where this fantasy becomes reality.” Braemer, who represents Cordero, says the artist is really someone that “collectors should want to consider.”
Her work is also represented by Vito Abba in Europe at Studio Abba in Florence, Italy. And, in November, her work will be featured at the Agora Gallery, 530 W 25th St. in New York City. Cordero will show her work at the Grand Palais in Paris in the Salon des Artistes Independants for "Art En Capital Exhibition." The annual invitation-only event, set for November 25 to 30, is sponsored by the French Ministry of Culture & Communication. She is also a resident artist of Artists of Palm Beach County.
When Cordero completes a piece, she says that she stands back and almost meditates on her creations. “I ask them, what would you like to tell me?”
The artist always gets an answer in return.
“I thank God for the joy of being alive . . . Thank you for all the beautiful souls that are in my life. The people that I meet along the path, my family, my friends.”
Her hope is that her emotive and dramatic paintings will speak to her viewers the same way they speak to her. “I aspire to create larger-than-life faces that convey human emotion and spirit in order to forge an emotional connection with the viewer, allowing that person to see the true beauty that lies within the human spirit.”
Reina Sofia
Giselle’s Hat
Cordero and Art Fusion Galleries director William Braemer
Cordero is featured in Poetic Visions, Art Fusion Galleries’ Summer Exhibition of 2014. Opening reception gala is Saturday, July 12, from 7 to 11 p.m. The exhibit features over 50 emerging to mid-career contemporary artists spanning more than twenty three countries. Through Monday, Sept. 15. 3550 North Miami Avenue (at North Miami Avenue & 36th Street). www.artfusiongalleries.com.
