Ceramist Virginia Torrego experiences art as an expression of intimacy

I have to confess that this text by Virginia, which you will read below, moved me when I received it, because it not only describes her work, but also shows her inner self in such a clear way that it allows us to discover this great artist, this great woman who is passionate about art. Her art, as an expression of her intimacy, defines her, and allows us to see her work with an accomplice’s gaze, which goes beyond the shapes and textures of clay, to bring us closer to her most intimate self. I hope you enjoy her text and her work as much as I do.
Andrés Moratinos.

“I am a ceramist born in Madrid who, after many years in Menorca, has ended up settling in Mallorca. I have come to the world of ceramics by the longest route, but I have learnt something from each step along the way that I have ended up applying to my pieces. Many years ago I studied Antiques Restoration and worked for a long time with materials and tools that were not well known to most people. Interspersed with sculpture and art history classes at university, I eventually became a museologist“.

“At the age of 34 I opened my first art school in the centre of Madrid, and I’m already on my third, in the heart of the Sierra de Tramontana (Mallorca). And I married a Basque painter who has a house full of paintings and brushes. In short, it’s not that my life revolves around Art, it’s that, without Art, it would be meaningless.

At this point in my life, when complication is no longer an option, what ceramics transmits to me is peace. It is my most personal and intimate creative part. So much so that all the pieces carry within them my own state of mind. Because the clay is porous, permeable, and absorbs everything that I feel every day that I dedicate with care to each piece. A clay that is also fragile and hard at the same time, like me“.

“I have a lathe, but it is never plugged in and the enamel shelf is very high. I like silence, calm, simplicity. The purity and authenticity that I find in the most elementary things is something that no addition or artifice offers me, and I literally run away from visual noise and anything that doesn’t feel authentic.

The clay, its texture and colour, always neutral, always earthy, is what I love to see on my table surrounded by tools and the remains of other muds that sometimes mix with the new one… That’s all. Nothing more. And nothing less.

“And so the pieces emerge, sculptural, imperfect, full of wounds or polished, depending on whether the day is good or not. The hours go by, absorbed in the treatment of each piece, without any expectations, without ever knowing where I’m going to end up with it, how it’s going to end, or if it’s even going to make it. I let myself go, I see no point in putting up resistance. Sometimes I go back to the workshop the next day and modify everything, break and bang without drama. I never get a piece through that I don’t connect with emotionally. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you feel it. It is part of the process. A process without objectives. Because the objective is the process itself. I don’t look for perfection, nor do I want it, because as I always say: My imperfections make me who I am, and so do my pieces“.

“Consequently, all my pieces are made in very different ways, and always by hand. I can work in block and hollow or I can work with plates and churros, there is no single path to take with all the pieces, because each one is unique and different. Even so, I like the idea of composition, of family, of series. I look for connections and resonances between the pieces, and that’s how I present them in my gallery. Sometimes they are not even made of the same clay, nor do they have the same shape, but they speak well with each other, and that is what is important, to let them find their place, their own space.

After the modelling phase, the kiln is always a bet on red, and although I respect the manufacturer’s advice, I enjoy experimenting in various temperature ranges, using the firing as another tool with which to explore creative resources, with which to let the pieces find themselves. And finally, the finishes, in keeping with this search for purity in simplicity, are usually with waxes, mixtures of pigments, or talcum powder, observing each piece under different types of light, seeking to accentuate its most interesting characteristics, taking care that nothing competes with the naked clay itself, with its character and texture“.

“Outside the creation in my workshop, my work as a director and art teacher keeps me in contact every day with all kinds of materials, processes, projects, ideas, books… and with students who keep me up to date with countless questions, and who enrich my own vision, often taking me out of my comfort zone, which is always necessary.

And if I go a little further away, I always end up in a museum, or lost in nature. These are the places where I have learned most of what I know. It is an almost unhealthy passion, but for me, Museums are my temples, my refuges. They are libraries of beauty that open my eyes to a whole world of inspiration. And living as I do in the Sierra de Tramontana, in Mallorca, where contact with nature is absolute and absolute, I can’t help but lose myself in its forests full of wood, stone, rocks and earth, marvelling at all its possible forms, and also the impossible ones. That’s what I feed on before returning to my workshop and starting the circle all over again”.

“And where can you find my pieces before they become independent and find their definitive home? Well, first of all in Latrés: my own gallery, workshop and school, located in Selva, Mallorca. But also in different art galleries in Menorca, a place with which, after so many years living and running an art school there, I always maintain ties, both emotional and commercial.

If you come to Selva one day, I would be delighted to welcome you to my small and simple world of shapes, contrasts, beauty and emotion; and to chat with you for a while“.

Project by Virginia Torrego