Ana Cabrera
First Fine Art Registry™ Member in Argentina
by
David Phillips
Ana Cabrera is the first Fine Art Registry™ member in Argentina, although she and her partner Segismundo Ulanowicz have been spreading the word and others are following suit. Ana’s story is best told in her own words.
I was born in the city of Paraná, in the province of Entre Rios, Argentina. From an early age I used to admire the green gullies and the brown colors of the Paraná river. In my teens I moved to Buenos Aires where I now live. My education was as a teacher – philosophy, psychology and education – but I went to work in social security.
All my life I dreamed about painting, but it wasn’t until my son asked me for help with his painting classes in his first year of high school that I had a chance to enter the field.
I began studying in the studio of the master, Luís Debairosmoura, and continued with Carlos Cañas, producing my first pieces in 1994. It was an important moment in my life when I decided to give myself the opportunity to develop the biggest love of my life, the art of painting.
I started painting figurative works. Feeling the need to capture the human figure, I inclined towards portraits to begin with. My colleagues asked me to paint portraits of their family and friends. Eventually one of my friends asked me to paint an abstract for her, and that was where things changed. Confronted by this challenge, I underwent an internal revolution and my way of seeing things changed dramatically. Freeing myself from concrete objects I went towards expressing the deepest and freest of my feelings. This produced in me a transformation, and since then the majority of my works have been abstract. I paint what I think and feel and not strictly speaking what I see.
Through my abstract art, I invite the viewer to free his imagination, allowing him to interpret for himself what the work means.
I love painting. My purpose is to communicate clearly through painting what I feel. If others manage to feel and connect with my work, that makes me very happy.
My painting
Inspiration comes to the surface when I succeed in connecting with the deeper zones of my feelings and I let them flow. I am nourished by life, what happens around me and what happens within me. I am affected by pain, happiness, the beauty of nature or a person’s gesture – an internal experience in which I reach some part of me to communicate, an emotion, a feeling; this process is for me freeing and repairing and in its turn it nourishes and renews me in my desire to give more of myself.
On the whole I use a mixed media technique in my painting. The base is acrylics but with a combination of other materials. Acrylics allow me to rapidly change the work while I am creating it, which is an advantage which avoids the necessity of waiting for it to dry fully first.
Shows
My work has been shown at the FAR® Museum,Phoenix, LAMOA Museum of California, a number of national exhibitions, museums, art galleries, salons in Buenos Aires, book fairs, community business centers and the Buenos Aires stock exchange, where one of my pieces was selected in a competition for a traveling art exhibition around the world in 23 cities in Europe, Canada, USA and South America. I have shows lined up in Barcelona, Miami, and Punta del Este in Uruguay.
Partnership
Fortunately for Ana, her partner Segismundo is a staunch supporter of her in her artistic endeavors and a capable, successful manager. She got not only a partner but a high powered representative in the bargain! It was Segis who first found Fine Art Registry. He tells how this came about:
I accompanied Ana and her painter colleagues to exhibitions where they showed their work and noticed that they were sticking a certificate of authenticity, printed by them on their computer, to the back of the paintings. Since this seemed to reduce the presence and value of the pictures, I decided to look on line for a source of a real certificate of authenticity.
I looked at a lot of websites without finding what I was looking for until eventually I came across FAR which has given us something more important, which is the permanent registration of the works on line, so that now Ana can present her works with a professional Certificate of Authenticity and tell her patrons that the work they purchased from her is secure forever.
Benefits from FAR®
Ana tells just how much she values the services of Fine Art Registry (she presented one of her pieces to the FAR museum in appreciation):
With FAR I saw that my works increased in value and were protected. After I registered them, I felt I could let them go without problems when I sold them, because I would always know where they were; even if the same one was resold, as the new owner would request a transfer of ownership, I would keep track of whose hands the painting was in and its current condition. This also allows me to let these people know about my new work, which is very important as they might want to buy more of my pieces.
New buyers are pleasantly surprised when they receive the COA and find out that the provenance and registration of the work is guaranteed.
In addition to the prestige which an organization such as FAR brings to those who are registered there, I saw that the FAR website was a display where I could show my works in a finely presented portfolio and a sales gallery which opens up opportunities for me to sell my works throughout the world.
I am also excited by the idea that future generations will be able to see my work online forever and remember me through my art. An artist’s wish is that everyone else can enjoy his work and that it might reach the largest number of people possible.
This has spurred me on to paint new pieces which I will add to the FAR portfolio now that I am enthused with this new opportunity to show my work to the world. I am also honored to be able to share the FAR platform with artists of other countries, admiring the quality of their work and feeling close to them in sharing the world of art, something which is highly enriching for the soul.
Creating an archive of my work meant for me having to organize the information before uploading to the FAR website, a job which my partner, Segis, helped me with enthusiastically. This made us realize that this was another benefit of FAR, being able to count on a permanent, orderly archive of the work. Now I don’t feel like a piece is really and truly finished until I have finished the FAR registration and stuck the tag on the painting, at which moment I feel my work is protected and valuable.
Argentina
Because I am so enthused about FAR, I have become an unconditional supporter and promoter of this organization in Argentina where no one knew anything about the possibility of protecting art works and giving them a different status, something about which there is little awareness over here. It’s the same with copyright protection. I expect a large number of artists will join FAR since our country emphasizes cultural development and has many outstanding artists.
Future
I am currently enjoying the expansion of getting my work shown and personal enrichment which I’m sure will be reflected in my current and future paintings. I have a strong desire to improve and I hope to be able to shape this so that it translates into getting closer to people.
— by David Phillips
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March 1, 2008
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