From my conversations with Luisa Gubbins during the years she lived in Barcelona, I specially recall one we held next to the door of her house sitting on the stairs waiting for a roommate that rescues us with the keys we had forgotten. As night laid down, a shaft of dark made its way across our faces, and our voices became unsilent. As blindness is a prophet, such darkness unveiled revelations. Luisa talked about her grandma’s stories, about her childhood memories, travels to Machu Picchu and Andean legends. The loneliness on the stairs made a noisy echo accompanying every word, and in the suggesting atmosphere created by darkness, it might be said that many and different voices took part in that conversation. In the line of her evocations, I could not help wonder how much of this memory were underlying her painting.

To paint, to write, to create, there is an origin to this obstinate game in which we get into. The first playing this bribeless game, putting pieces of their souls in the game, are kids. The images most badly chasing the artist are the childhood memory, the recall of the free world that children caress before going to sleep. There is something in the initial Luisa Gubbins’ work, the TV scenography she did before moving in to Barcelona, that indicates her visits to wonderland. These puffed tables, long back chairs, checkerboard floor where a tiny red cup is waiting for the girl that picks it up from the plate, belong to Alicia’s dream. With such scenography we expect that suddenly the white rabbit with a clock on its hand pops up. I trust in my intuition, and another Luisa’s works confirmed it: Large armchairs on a checkerboard like a proud lady from the province have the inquisitive and threatening personality of the Queen of Hearts.

It is frequent in Luisa’s work such capacity to confer life upon objects, to grant a psychology making them disturbing or filled by their own history and biography. These large armchairs ( A ), a lamp-mannequin ( B ) would be delightful for Felisberto Hernandez. The simpler, but not less suggestive, objects ( C ) behind which mind is hidden such table where the musical score promises an antique and silence music kept inside? (D) From any drawer a universe may arise: Carroll’s, and Lautreamont’s strange and dark associations, of family memories, and of collective legends. It is not odd that the artist has made a self-portrait using a bony furniture ( D ) From any drawer a universe may arise: Carroll’s, and Lautreamont’s strange and dark associations, of family memories, and of collective legends. It is not odd that the artist has made a self-portrait using a bony furniture ( E ), full of broken and empty drawers, a usual memory. Inside each little drawer, memories fight again each other to find a line, color or volume to be introduced to the world.

As I said …. Childhood memories. Memory, also of collective legends, mythical stories and the landscape where they are formed. If childhood memories are the first measurements of our inner fortress, tradition and geography enhance their horizons. Luisa owns to Puno, Cuzco, rituals on mountain climbing, the deepest insights in the soul, provided by Andean view. From these debts, paintings appears as an offering to the artistic path, such an offering to the Apus at the top of the hill. The red colors are carefully cherished, the veils  (  F ), are so beautiful that the homage encouraged by the mythical spirit is undoubtful. Seeing these birds turn into bright colors in front of the mountains is a must to understand that this painting is lightened by an Andean myth. The Incas honored the Apus, from which tops water flows down to feed the soils, and Luisa confers her gift upon the divinities that watered her sensitivity.

The quest of the myth is not mere folklore. Au contraire, it has to do with what is common to mankind: The mythical root is strongly deepened into the most universal. There, we are one, so the portraits are multiplied in white, in ochre, in orange. This is the encounter with other voices enlightening the human condition, that is why somewhere in Luisa’s painting the poets also present their offerings. From this darkness covering all of us, Mario Benedetti’s voice comes playing the musical score. His loving psalmody is the background for a couple that gives to the spectator a close-up ( G ). In the light of this poem flowing in this imprecise space, a glimpse of what keeps these lovers together, words illuminating humanity; she holds a little flame on her hand ( H ).

Poured deep down in these ponds, childhood and myths, Luisa gets out towards reality. There is nothing more realistic, more detailed than her stages ( I ). Or maybe not. Appearances might be deceiving ( J ). Is this breaking point between the foregoing oneiric world and the verisimilitude of the scene safe? It is needed to look closer. Did this last depicted picture announce the entrance in the theater? ( K ) These word filling the space where figures appear, are they a doppelganger of the dramatic word? Is there also a powerful personality in the colors of the furniture chosen for The Lieutenant of Inishmore? ( L ) And specially, is there a story-telling and fooling around capacity of Molinita in his iridescent robe? Is he announcing his sacrifice to the gods of love and of the star system in this involving red? ( M ) Yes, at the end of the day, behind the realistic metamorphosis, childhood and myth are still getting closer to Luisa Gubbins’ works. It is a fact: To recognize the fragile amazement of the everyday realities it is necessary to come back from a mysterious tour.

Gemma Máquez Fernández
Barcelona, January 21, 2010