Guillermina Neri is a vibrant and fascinating artist whose smile and energy immediately prick your interest. Avessa recently walked into her emerald-green Miami garden and sat at a meticulously arranged table with organic lemonade, Argentine alfajores, and multi-colored grapes. The food and setting only reinforce what a thoughtful person Guillermina is and how much she considers the world around her in her actions.
As we gazed around the serene garden, two custom murals attracted attention. Since Guillermina Neri is constantly creating and focusing on her art, she was inspired to paint on the garden’s wooden fence. One evening, she felt the urge to express herself in her backyard and started flinging paint on the old greyish-brown fence. She didn’t even know what the initial mural looked like until the next day.
The initial result was a gorgeous impressionistic garden using red, orange, green, and blue, the colors of summer. Guillermina created the contrasting night image of the first mural the next night. It was exceptional, filled with muted flowers, grapes, and hashtags using blues, purples, and deep roses.
Guillermina is genuinely a whirlwind artist who has experimented with immersive art, writing, fashion, philosophy, and painting. She stated, “In all my work, I try to reveal the wonder of humans interpreting space and time. I try to demystify the idea of time that a linear mind perceives. I assume that our inner being, or soul, is timeless and can manifest itself physically only if there is a space and context for it.”
Early Influence
Guillermina Neri talked about her start in Rosario, Argentina. Her family owns various properties in her hometown, and before focusing on Art, Guillermina was a valet in a family-owned parking lot. But as she continued to help her family’s business, she realized she needed a creative and intellectual routine. Her mind constantly twirled, thinking about art, design, and how her aesthetics were growing and changing.
Guillermina realized that her mind was getting disorganized. Consequently, she started studying design. What was fascinating was Guillermina’s mother’s influence on her art. Her mother is an astrologist but focuses more on how nature and human nature intertwine as opposed to divination.
Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece. For many, Astrology is a belief system that utilizes motions, positions, and relations of the planets, the moon, and the sun to interpret human characteristics and spirituality.
Guillermina Neri started her artistic life drawing circles and other structured designs. Utilizing astrology, she recognized this moon as a symbol of emotions and the sun as the inner human self. She told us that art is where she can make mistakes and research her feelings. In 2012, she started focusing heavily on art using the mandala. The word mandala itself means “circle” in Sanskrit. A mandala has been used for centuries to symbolize the universe and is used chiefly in Hinduism and Buddhism. Guillermina has periodically used the mandala as a subject in her artwork and as an aid to meditation.
Many Artistic Expressions
She feels that the mandala helps her concentrate on herself, and Guillermina believes nothing can invade or disrupt our inner self within the circle. Later, after years of reflection and artistry, she began to go out and teach both. Despite her creative talent, she didn’t want to focus on commercial design because it bored her. Guillermina noted that many people utilized drugs or other intoxicants to escape reality and boredom. She used art. She stated,
“I use my energy to express myself. My art represents the violence of love.”
Although Guillermina loves painting and can be seen constantly drawing, she has some intriguing new ideas to teach and utilize her creativity beyond producing beautiful art. She told us, “My artistic expressions result from an experimental process. To express abstract ideas of basic concepts such as the sun and the moon, the man and the woman, the body and the soul, the heaven and the hell, the human and the machine. And their attempts to link with each other to evolve in search of their transcendence.”
Alquimizarte
She is visiting Miami to create a residential art studio and focus on her new “Experiencia Alquimizarte” project. Alquimizarte is an immersive, holistic experience that allows people to improve their inner selves through an integrated program of art, yoga, exercise, and healthy food. Given the current social and political turmoil, Guillermina Neri believes that expressing yourself is more essential than ever.
Art is impulsive and frees the soul. What is interesting about Guillermina’s Alquimizarte is that she is a public painter who loves to feel other people’s energy. The experience encourages people to avoid using privacy to be creative. Guillermina connects spiritually with the material she paints in and the energy around her; whatever happens around her disappears as a distraction. She encourages her students in Alquimzarte to feel that freedom and focus on the energy around them. To not be afraid of expressing themselves.
A Liberating Experience
Recently, she was involved in an early version of “Experiencia Alquimizarte,” where multiple artists, therapists, and health practitioners went to an island and brought a group of clients to take a step beyond the everyday humdrum. For Guillermina Neri, the object of the experience was for people to express their emotions without inhibition and break the conformity of their daily lives. The team included a yoga teacher, nutritionist, and, of course, artists to provide art therapy.
In one exercise, she offered people t-shirts and shared her beliefs to enable them to let and paint with abandon. What surprised her was that her audience turned their back on the t-shirts, organically collected together, and started to paint Guillermina herself. She was surprised but enthralled because her goal was to have everyone express themselves without constraints. In this instance, Guillermina stopped being the center of attention for the class and instead made the others the center.
She thought it was liberating for the class to start painting, letting themselves go like children, and letting their emotions be free. Her class forgot their everyday reality, got dirty, and did not worry about it. This experience is a clear example of her artistic philosophy: there is no right or wrong in art.
Art and Your Inner Self
In addition to Alquimizarte, Guillermina Neri utilizes her understanding of astrology to help people identify their desires and find their inner selves. She believes that every person has a special place in the world. Everything has a particular reason to exist. These beliefs are all expressed in her artwork. She uses her designs to demonstrate the reason to live and a representation of her inner self. Guillermina is convinced that art can help people advance and grow. She stated, “Art helps because you don’t think to create art. You do it.”
Her work helps people understand themselves and increase their knowledge of engaging with others. Guillermina encourages everyone to animate themselves and be unafraid to make errors. She stated. “There is always outside pressure to be scared. You should be unafraid to produce and create whatever you feel.” In fact, Guillermina believes that her philosophy and immersive techniques that she has practiced can be utilized in corporations to help free business people create innovations and, more importantly, learn what they are good at and communicate their inner selves to their co-workers.
Thoughts on Contemporary Art and Profit
Guillermina Neri also discussed the state of contemporary art. She is dubious of some of the results. Contemporary artistry can sometimes become ridiculous with the focus on shocking the audience. She believes this type of egocentric art requires strangeness and jolting visions to get attention. The point of Guillermina’s work is not to make herself the center. Instead, she wants a more collaborative group experience to interpret and enjoy art.
Another area that is problematic in Guillermina’s opinion is the topic of money and art. She does not understand how artists create work for simple profit. Guillermina Neri is more attracted to teaching and creating collaboration than commercial art. She wants to help others express themselves and liberate themselves. Her mantra is never to use her philosophy of creativity to predict or force people into a path. Instead, she uses art to understand the natural world and teaches people to help them accept themselves. Guillermina stated, “Predictive or egocentric Art interferes with a person’s mind and fate. I do not want to be a dictator; I want to enable people to be better versions of themselves.”
Art is Life Experience
Her art is created primarily to help people understand their emotions and experiences. Guillermina believes that there are two ways to live life. One is that you let life manage and direct you, or instead, you live life proactively. She wants people to let people let themselves go. She believes you need to stand up for yourself and create a comfortable, enthralling spot in the world. Guillermina wants to be original and never repeat her work because it will become tired and old hat. Before coming to Miami, Guillermina started teaching in Rosario at a university for people 50 and older.
Her focus in this class was to enable her students to continue learning and living. From this and her other immersive experiences, Guillermina has a plan for her future. She envisions bringing her work and teaching to corporations and other organizations that do not typically focus on artistry. By speaking of creativity and the benefits of people liberating themselves from daily constraints, she believes she can help others activate their inner selves and find originality that can translate into business and personal success.
The idea is to execute her theories on art and life and integrate them into immersive events or classes. She is using art to free herself from strain, become more creative, and ease her inner child.
Alquimizarte for the Future
Visuals and freeing emotions are Guillermina’s strengths. Her next project is to develop Alquimizarte further and start to market it to public and private organizations. She has come to Haligon Fine Arts to learn and develop her “Experiencia Alquimizarte.” Haligon is primarily a studio for sculpture, and Guillermina came to Miami to learn more about sculpture. But she also wants to use this experience to further market and enhance the ideas of Alquimizarte.
Her next steps are to create classes as groundwork to make Alquimizarte, which includes her art philosophy, viable for public and private organizations. Creativity is also needed in corporations, and the idea that Alquimizarte could help free people’s emotions and be creative in a more powerful way would increase an organization’s goals.
Guillermina Neri has a distinctive natural charm. She is enchanting and wants to make you learn more, which is critical for marketing Alquimizarte. Guillermina can express herself beautifully, and we at Avessa do not doubt her success and her path to enable the rest of us to liberate ourselves and collaborate with her to make beautiful art along the way.
