“Since I have benefited from making art, and it has been part of my healing journey, I want other people to have that opportunity. I want to help as many people as I can, providing the place and the materials, because I am passionate about art and what an incredible practice it is. You move emotions by making art.”
Fine artist Bea Ortiz has had her own health issues abated by staying true to her artistic practice.
Having arrived in New York City in 1998 from her native Spain after graduating in 1997, her first job as an artist was restoring a mural in a Spanish restaurant in Astor Place. The owner of the restaurant, which had suffered a leak that washed out the painting on one wall, asked her if she could re-paint the damaged wall of the mural that resembled the work of Joan Miro. The restoration was a success and the owner was pleased with her work, so he recommended her to other people. Soon she had a thriving business in the decorative arts: painting murals, gilding and creating faux finishes like marble and Venetian plaster, in private homes and businesses across the city, elsewhere in the US and abroad. She also did set design creating murals and faux finishes for an advertising company based in Long Island City.
“I didn’t know that there was such a world before I got into it”, she says. “First off, I had to learn a lot of very specific English. When anybody asked me if I could do [a job], I just said yes, and if I didn’t know, I would just figure it out. Mostly, I would be working in a team, so I was learning as I went, tips and tricks even taping – to prepare for painting – is a method. How to prepare surfaces. So, I learnt a lot of technical things about this trade that I did not learn in college.”
After many years of freelancing, in 2016 Bea took a full-time job in decorative arts and shortly thereafter her health began to deteriorate. She experienced a lot of physical difficulties in a job in which she had to be very athletic on a daily basis, climbing scaffolding and constantly moving. “I could barely walk. I couldn’t move my hands. It became an incredible struggle just to make it to work”.
She eventually received a medical diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis and had to quit working and go on disability benefits. She thought she would never paint again and accepted that she was “disabled. I really thought I was done”.
She had some friends in the Catskills and decided to move there in 2017. Little by little, with less of a crazy lifestyle, she started to get better, first setting up a studio in her home.
“There is a question of life’s purpose. What I was painting in my job, it did not really come from the heart. I was being told what to paint. I mean, I could make my own interpretation and I have my own style, but ultimately, there was not much room for creativity”.
Bea was born a small town near Barcelona, grew up in Valladolid and studied fine art at the University of Salamanca an ancient city in Spain, which was a storied experience. The university is the second oldest university in Europe having been founded in 1218 and was a key cultural center in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. The city, which dates back to the Iron Age, despite being invaded and looted many times over the centuries, is still famous for its stunning historical landmarks. If this city of outstanding aesthetic beauty was a backdrop for the start of her career, the Catskills, an area of stunning natural beauty was the scene of her return to her roots as an artist.
Since moving her art studio to the Commons Building in Margaretville in December 2019, she has focused solely on art, and nutrition by observing a fairly strict anti-inflammatory diet: no gluten, no sugar, no wheat, in what she calls “a process of observation”, continuing things that make her better and seeing what causes a relapse.
She is now mostly what you might call “in remission” and feeling healthy.
Now Bea is bringing the healing gift of art to the Catskills community on weekends in her studio in Margaretville in a project called “Make Your Own Art”.
Bea’s practice has always been unusual, in that she’s often collaborative, with other artists and visitors to her exhibitions. In one exhibition of her work that took place at the XXII TAC Festival of Theater and Arts in Valladolid in 2011, she invited visitors to paint the walls in between her own paintings. Dancers performed in the space and Bea painted them too. At the end of the show’s run, when she took the work down, she was rewarded by the sight of the empty spaces where her art had been on the walls that were engulfed by the visitors’ art.
“I feel that maybe my purpose in life was not to make decorative art. Maybe my purpose in life was to use art in a different way. Even the aspect of, you know, not only making artwork, but also the aspect of connecting with people through community arts feels very purposeful to me.”
There were a few accidental incidences last year where Bea got the opportunity to welcome people into her studio to do random projects and this gave her the idea for “Make Your Own Art” which has been running for a couple of months. Bea has seen it lift participants’ spirits.
“Adults are afraid of even trying to make art and this exercise has been good to draw people out of their embarrassment”. Bea encourages attendees to draw “without a goal”, that is without any need to improve, or make a body of work, or make a career out of art. She has limited interaction with participants so that nobody gets intimidated. She will quietly wander around and drop little hints and impart tips in passing, or changing the paint water when necessary.
“I see people walking out of here with a different mood and I have received a lot of appreciation from people. Some people tell me: ‘I had no idea how much I missed art. I had been 15+ years without picking up a brush and I haven’t stopped painting since I left your studio’”.
Join Bea for “Make Your Own Art”. Adults and children welcome. Commons Building 785 Main Street, 2nd Floor, Margaretville, NY 12455. Saturdays and Sundays 1pm-4pm
Cost: Pay What You Wish / Suggested Donation: $10 per person, but don’t let lack of funds keep you away.
