Guillermina Lynch: “Real beauty is the kind that’s missing something — open, incomplete, broken”
“Real beauty is the kind that’s missing something — open, incomplete, broken”
Every adaptation involves some kind of transformation, and Guillermina is a woman who, on the way to finding herself, has become as strong as the paternal grandmother who marked her childhood and is present in her work. She does not avoid looking straight at the shadow side of things, and in the bad moments she surrounds herself with people she can learn and grow from.
Who is Guillermina Lynch
As a girl, Guillermina hid among the bushes in the garden to dress up, read and paint freely — at home they were very strict, and play had to keep to its hours.
Nature protected her then, and as an adult it helped her connect with herself and saved her from a future far from art. Her work began with velvet, without knowing at the time that this material would give her the chance to experiment with the unsaid, to explore what lies beneath a visual and tactile texture so seductive. That is why she creates rough, hard, abrasive textures on top of it — to break the spell and open a deeper dialogue, with touch as a way of reading.
From Eastern culture she is drawn to light and shadow, to symbols, to the aesthetics of mystery and distance. She finds the strength of orchids fascinating — their capacity to mutate in order to survive.
In her work music matters a great deal, because it helps her hold the piece together. But above all, art for her is healing, and connection with those sides of us that exist but are not always visible.
The interview
What materials do you use in your work?
Mainly velvet. I love working with textile because it arrives already carrying information — it refers to many things, it stirs feelings, and you can hold a dialogue with the material. It also evokes monarchy, the ecclesiastical, the curtain of a theatre where a play is about to be staged… it’s a very exquisite thing that shouldn’t be handled too much. But I work with the unsaid, with what goes on beneath appearances. That’s why it interests me as a support: because things look like one thing and can be another.
How did you arrive at it?
First I worked with it a lot, and only afterwards understood why it interested me. It has to do with the fact that I paint ponds — and there is something deep going on beneath that surface of perfect beauty with golden flowers. Inside there is a universe you can’t see, and it’s extremely interesting. There’s mud, fish, darkness. That’s how I work the velvet: I play with the sheen and the textures that appear as I lay down layer after layer of paint. Also by making mistakes — sometimes it scorches and turns rough, or I overdo the amount of material, but new readings appear.
Is it a difficult material?
What happens is that I choose a velvet of a certain colour, but I can never really know what colour it is, because it’s always in dialogue with the light. It can’t be pinned down. So sometimes it’s hard for me to choose colours to work with, since they will keep shifting through the hours of the day. It also has enormous seductive power — you just want to admire its sheen and stroke it — but in the end I manage to break the spell and work on top of it.
What is the relationship between your work and beauty?
For me, real beauty is the kind that’s missing something — the kind that is open, incomplete, broken. When it’s complete it loses its magic, because there’s no way in any more. If you look at my work you might say “how lovely”, but in fact, when you come closer, something repels you: something corrupted, when you see things layered on top or burned. I’ve been told that if I wanted to work with velvet I should make my work invisible to the touch and have it look perfect. But I like provoking that rejection, because it’s what lets you connect with the piece and make your own visual and tactile readings. That way you can get inside it. That’s what I’m after. Whereas untouched velvet takes you wherever it wants.
What is the process of making like?
There’s a lot of chance in it. I put the matrix on top of the velvet and work blind. Obviously after so many years I have technical control, I more or less know what will happen, but never exactly until I lift the stencil. That’s magical — seeing how all the elements start speaking to each other. It’s also painful, because sometimes something appears that halts the whole production and I have to work out how to fix it, since nothing can be erased. That can take me hours, sometimes days.
What have you been reading, listening to and watching lately?
Music is very important in my work; I think it shows up in the pieces. It takes me to a certain state and also holds me there. In books I’m reading Orlando, though during the pandemic reading purely for pleasure became very hard for me. I want to read it because the ambiguity of the character interests me, but I’m struggling to get through it. I also took a seminar on art and nature — about how humans have looked at nature across history. And I’ve been watching Babylon Berlin, a series about the years before the Second World War with art direction that blew my mind. I connected a lot with the Art Deco movement that emerged then, when people had seen death and human finitude at its most extreme and were trying to reconnect with life. That interests me: they were very creative years, when new things appeared. I wonder whether there will be an explosion of ideas now, and what will come after.
How did you experience the pandemic?
The loss of freedom frightened me a great deal — that a government could arrive and say “everything closes”. That power of the State over us, and how people went numb. I don’t minimise covid at all, but I think we let ourselves be dominated; fear paralysed us. Segregation drained our strength. Not being able to see our children, our parents, seemed terrible to me. And that’s coming from someone who is happy shut away working all day. But this imposed confinement is sinister. How, through a virus, the world fragments, closes in on itself and breeds hatred. I’m also troubled by the lack of interest in discovering the real origin of this pandemic, and by how we are losing human contact.
What did you work on during that time?
During lockdown I spent my time reading about subjects I needed to research, surrounded by nature. That let me connect with myself, and I think it’s what saved me. At the end of 2019 I had started working on some coats and kimonos with orchids. During the pandemic I did intense research into the botanical expeditions of past centuries to the Americas, which stripped out thousands of plant species — orchids among them.
What did you find out?
That it’s one of the largest families of flowering plants on the planet. More than 30,000 species have been discovered and they grow in almost every terrestrial climate. If you draw the strangest flower you can imagine, there will always be an orchid that resembles it in shape and colour. There are ones that look like bees, bats, cradles, little slippers… They’re astonishing.
What drew you in?
I was looking for what to put on those coats when I spoke with the granddaughter of one of Argentina’s first women botanists, Maevia Correa, who had written her thesis on orchids — and I became hooked on how interesting and intelligent they are. I also discovered they’re not as fragile as they look, and that they have survived because of a great capacity to mutate. There was a relationship with the pandemic there, with how necessary it is to produce a deep change in our lives. We too will keep mutating, not only in our habits but genetically. That’s what orchids do. To attract certain pollinators, for example, they copy the form of the male or female pollinator so that the pollen sticks when the insect tries to mate.
Which women inspire you?
In my life everything has been very binary, and I’m trying to break with that. My two grandmothers, for instance: my mother’s mother was the one who put me into imaginary worlds, telling me stories about fairies and elves. She had a cabinet full of costume jewellery that I would try on, dressed in her gloves, kimonos and organza gowns… but she was very weak. She had to ask my grandfather’s permission even to buy a pair of stockings. My other grandmother was very Catholic, austere, and read me stories about the martyrdom of saints, or told me cautionary tales so I would learn to be a pious girl. The house was a downer. If I stayed the night, breakfast was always at eight, and if I got up later the tea was cold. But at the same time she was a very strong woman. She would hand me a book in German and, even though I didn’t understand it, she’d say: “well, you’ve read it in Spanish, so get on with it and you’ll work it out.” Everything was possible for her. Among artists I have many references — I love Louise Bourgeois, for instance. To think that such a tiny person made that gigantic spider, or worked on tapestries, cutting away what wasn’t meant to be seen. Her way of relating to the body through textile interests me.
What influences you when you create?
Eastern culture always attracted me — the aesthetics, the mystery, the distance. I’m interested in Jung and in the need to connect with that darkness we all have. If you don’t connect with it, it dominates you. If you do, it empowers you. Being in tune with those parts is much more interesting, and healthier. There is also something of self-healing in my paintings, especially in the first series.
What did you play at as a girl?
As a child I had friends, but I was also very solitary. At home they were extremely strict. My parents read enormously and couldn’t bear to see you doing nothing. So I hid in the garden. There I read, drew, wrote, made flower crowns, melted mud to make sculptures. I also spent my time in costume, always among the plants. Those clumps of bushes gave me a protection — without it I’d have been sent off to do something considered more important. At my maternal grandmother’s there was a woman who came to do sewing repairs and made me the costumes I designed. Even then I liked being in contact with fabric. I saw myself as an artist; I wanted to study art or design.
Which traits define you?
I’m obsessive, very perfectionist. That’s my existential dilemma, because many people tell me “you need to ease up on the self-demand”, but I also believe I achieved things because of that perfectionism. I’m analytical and perceptive too, which sometimes causes me problems because I pick up too much of what’s going on around me. I consider myself introverted and extroverted at the same time. Now that I have the studio at home, I can go a week without going out, not even to buy fruit.
Which everyday pleasures do you enjoy?
Since I live outside the city, going to exhibitions and walking around Buenos Aires fascinates me. Seeing how eclectic it is, how many kinds of architecture you can find. I also like walking through the garden — contact with nature is a permanent, vital need for me.
Is there anything you regret not having done?
I would have liked to study Fine Arts, textile design, interior design — but then I wouldn’t have had my two children. I can’t see myself doing anything else, because they wouldn’t have been there. I found a diary where, at eighteen, I wrote: “today I realised art is my thing” — and thirty years later I was able to do what I want, but with my children. It’s true I don’t have the training other artists have, but I know myself and I know what I want. I learned from experience, and I was able to capitalise on what could have left me in that self-induced coma, as I call that long stretch when I didn’t allow anything to stimulate me. But it didn’t. It was a process of healing, as well as of creation and satisfaction.
Anything still on your list?
Rugs, and jewellery.
Which social issues concern you?
A few years ago my daughter was given a dog. I had never connected with animals that way, and because of that dog — who helped me a great deal through hard times — I’m now completely sensitised to everything to do with animal cruelty. Ecological disasters are affecting me too; it’s an issue that has been there for years, but now I’ve made it my own. And with the whole pandemic situation I also think about the social gap opening up: people who don’t have enough to eat, or small entrepreneurs who had a dream and lost it, or had to give it up. Of course you can start again, but you don’t always have the strength.
Which country would you like to live in?
London fascinates me, though I must admit there is something cultural there that bothers me a little — that air of superiority, of conquering the world — but I love the Pre-Raphaelites. The aesthetics attract me a lot, the austere way of life, though the climate would kill me. For me sun is vital. Maybe I’d spend a season on a Caribbean island, because I love the sea. When I get into the water I turn into another person. On a trip to the Bahamas I spent the whole time diving, watching everything happening below. I’d also like to live in Japan for a while. In Argentina you don’t get that London feeling of being at the epicentre, where so many cultures converge — but I love Argentina. I don’t know if I could live anywhere else.
What do you think you would have done if you hadn’t been an artist?
Psychology is a discipline that interests me enormously. Perhaps I would have studied that — but really I can’t see myself doing anything else. I would always have ended up doing this. I was an English teacher when my children were small and I loved encouraging the students, building their confidence so they would shine and end up believing in themselves, aware of their own capacities. It gives me great pleasure to help people with potential.
What are you working on now?
I recently found my first paintings, which are more abstract, and I’d like to venture back into them. Back then I started taking painting classes but gave up because I got frustrated — I didn’t have the tools or the language to express what I needed at that moment. Now they seem more interesting to me, and I see them as the antechamber to what I do today. Perhaps I’d like to take them up again. They’re paintings on canvas, with India ink, with pastels.
Will you change materials?
I don’t think I can leave velvet for now. Add things to it, yes — but I’m not ready to abandon it.
Guillermina in her studio
Guillermina Lynch is part of United by Art, the programme through which Iskin Sisters invites contemporary women artists to create the art prints that accompany every piece in its packaging.
To see more of her work: guillerminalynch.com · @guillermina_lynch