Eider Zabaleta

viernes, 1 de enero de 2016

"Brighton and Hove´s Artists Open Houses 2015”-Eider Zabaleta-

Eider is a talented artist in many ways, often working with her brother Gorka. They sing together and share an artistic life. Her drawings are confident and revealing pieces that draw their life force from a unbreakable love of the Basque region.

In many places of the world it seems that distinctive cultures are vanishing but this is not true in the Basque Country. Here people speak in perhaps the oldest language in Europe, Euskera. Basque people are ethnically different. And they have a easy link with distant forefathers that is rarely seen elsewhere. They are a sea-going people situated at the south of the Bay of Biscay and the sea – it’s pleasures and horrors – pervades their world-view.

It is within this reality that Eider does her work as she captures moments in everyday life. There is a simplicity that seems at odds with the pace and the of-the-moment feel of modern life. Patience is a virtue; discipline something to be admired and truthfulness is an expected currency of everyday interaction. It is from this world that Eider’s work emerges and their ageless quality says much about the timeless values.

-ENCOUNTERS ART SPACE-

Eider Zabaleta (50x60)

miércoles, 18 de noviembre de 2015

Larraldea (Senpere) 2014

"Brighton and Hove´s Artists Open Houses 2015”

Often Eider Zabaleta’s subjects will be moments from everyday life in the Basque Area of Northern Spain. She is deeply connected with the ancient Basque kingdom and feels that its heritage lives within her: in art, in song, in poetry and infused into a way of being that is lost in time. She knows that a culture will fade and die unless it is studied, known from within and lived. She is Basque intuitively; as if it is part of her DNA.

In much of her recent work the women of Basque towns are featured. Perhaps their gossip fills the room whilst they prepare the table for a meal. For example, in a recent painting an older lady, with a deeply lined face, looks severe. The dog under the table hopes for scraps. In such works Eider is a realist and an observer but a romantic as well, as she sees the ordinary as extraordinary. She notices the trivial and it becomes remarkable.

Eider says: " I like to capture age and the passing of the years, how experience leaves its mark. Expecially people who close to the land and experience the elements. It pleases me to draw with one line of the pen. Complexity is rendered integrated by the unity of the line. Such is the life in Oñati-Guipúzcoa, a traditional Basque town".