“A space of resonance…”
Paul Zimmerman in conversation with Noemi Estrada Tamargo
Paul Zimmerman: How did you get interested in art?
Noemi Estrada Tamargo: I grew up in Asturias (Spain) in a family where creativity was part of everyday life — painting, music, model-making, and literature. My father was a science fiction writer, and from a very young age, I found drawing to be a natural language of expression. Later, my higher studies in art in Avilés (in Spain) gave me a rigorous foundation in academic portraiture, which today serves both as an anchor and as a counterpoint. Over time, that discipline expanded into different « approaches»: plein-air on metal, landscapes of memory and dream, spiritual abstraction on a large scale, and the artwork “Maison Fragmentée” (permanent collection of the Boesch Museum in La Baule in France). My interest in art emerged from this creative ecology and today translates into a practice, I conceive as an epistemological experiment, where each line of work enters into dialogue with the others. For me, painting has always been a way of translating both lived places and inner topographies.
PZ: What is the most challenging aspect of your work?
NET: The greatest challenge is maintaining a common thread within the diversity of my « approachs »: — the rigor of academic portraiture, the contingencies of plein-air oil painting on metal support, the mnemonic invention of dream landscapes, the immersion of spiritual abstraction, and the modular narrative of the artwork “Maison Fragmentée”. Each line demands different techniques, temporalities, and gestures. My task is to let these differences coexist, without forcing an artificial unity, while still sustaining a coherent discourse that articulates a constellation of questions about presence, perception, dwelling and home. It is not about homogenizing but allowing diversity to construct a shared field.
PZ: What is your artistic process? How do you create your paintings?
NET: process varies according to the subject and the medium. In plein-air oil paintings on metal support, I face the outdoors directly: humidity, light, and even oxidation inscribe themselves into the copper, zinc, or aluminum surfaces. Portraiture begins with the rigor of academic drawing, but soon opens up to experimental gestures. Landscapes of memory rise slowly, layer upon layer, like a palimpsest of recollection. Large abstractions demand physical immersion, almost a choreography, while the artwork”Maison Fragmentée” is built as a narrative mosaic, panel by panel. More broadly, my process unfolds as a constant negotiation between control and accident, memory and matter, discipline and revelation. For me, painting is both structure and intuition. I also try to create a contrast between hot and cold like the one in the portraiture artwork “Femme.”
PZ: Do you have any particular goal in mind when you start a new piece?
NET: I don’t seek a predetermined image or a literal representation, maybe only this happens in my Plein Air paintings. But in my work, my goal is much about to enter into a relationship with the subject — whether a face, a flower, a seascape, or a memory — and let the process surprise me. Each work begins as an inquiry into presence and perception. What matters most is not reaching a predefined result, but allowing the painting to manifest what is latent: a surplus of meaning, an unforeseen relation, something invisible that emerges through the process.
PZ: How do you know when the painting is finished?
NET: A painting is finished when it achieves autonomy, when it breathes on its own and no longer needs me. There is a moment when any additional gesture would be redundant, when the work resists further intervention. That is when I know it has reached its presence. And, on a more playful note, a painting is truly finished when it can’t be touched anymore: when it has been sold.
PZ: Has your practice changed over time?
NET: Yes. I began with drawing and academic portraiture, which gave me the discipline and rigor necessary to build presence. Over the years my practice expanded into multiple « approachs »: plein-air on metal, landscapes of memory and dream, large-scale spiritual abstractions, and fragmented domestic narratives. This evolution reflects a shift from academic representation to a polyphonic practice, one that does not seek a single answer but rather an interwoven set of investigations into perception, embodiment, and space.
PZ: Which artists are you most influenced by?
NET: Velázquez, Goya… I feel close also to the light of Monet and Sorolla, the vital gesture of Joan Mitchell, and the symbolic intensity of Georgia O’Keeffe. In them I find interlocutors more than direct influences: resonances that move through my plein-air works, my abstractions, and my portraits.These genealogies are not mere references; they act as historical vectors that help me situate my own questions about light, nature, and the body in the present. I like also some artist contemporánes. I live relatively close to Paris and enjoy its cultural offerings whenever I can. However, I see creation as something built from within. All of our aesthetic experiences throughout our lives influence us, and we create from them, but while this can’t be avoided, the ideal is to create from our own voice.
PZ: How would you define yourself as an artist?
NET: I am a painter working between figuration and abstraction, between the microcosm of the domestic and the openness of the spiritual. I am interested in sustaining a practice rooted in tradition yet oriented toward contemporary questions.
I conceive my work as a transversal inquiry into pictorial ontologies: negotiating between presence and absence, the intimate and the universal, the visible and the invisible. I do not aim to illustrate but to create a space of resonance where different dimensions can coexist. For all these considerations, I think I have the quality of an artist with her specificities.
PZ: What are you working on now?
NET: I recently completed a residency at the Museum Bernard Boesch in the City of La Baule in France, where I developed plein-air oil artworks on metal support, landscapes of memory, and large abstractions. Currently, I am focusing on a series of portraits that begin with academic rigor and open into more experimental languages, exploring the boundary between classicism and contemporaneity. At the same time, I am preparing new projects that aim to articulate cultural links between Spain and France, situating my practice in a broader international context where the personal and the institutional, the intimate and the historical, can dialogue. In particular, I am also implementing an ambitious multi-artistic performance project (painting, music, dance, video,etc…) in a participatory approach and dialogue with the public, by linking prehistoric arts and contemporary art.
PZ: What is the main message of your work?
NET: My work does not seek to transmit a single, closed message but rather to open a space of relation. In my paintings, figuration and abstraction, landscape and memory, the spiritual and the everyday coexist as resonances. I want to affirm that painting remains vital, capable of connecting body, memory, and spirit. It is not about explanation but about generating questions and allowing the invisible to emerge within the visible — so the viewer may feel both the fragile beauty of what surrounds us and its mystery.