*LITA CABELLUT*
*Viniebla*
*Mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 x 3 cm*
*2024*
*Courtesy Opera Gallery*

Interview conducted by Trip Avis

Trip Avis: Lita, you have spoken about your lifelong adoration of flowers-the delicate majesty and beauty of flora and how you communed with them as a child by ingesting them. To what extent did your love of flowers inspire your pursuit of this project?

Lita Cabellut: The love for flowers inspired me 100%, for me it is paying tribute to something that is very present in my life and that I love so much. In my worst moments, when I couldn't buy bread I bought flowers, they have always been a source of inspiration and beauty. They transmit to me something difficult to explain, flowers are the pure state of life, they offer you all their majesty until the moment when their petals begin to fall off and their leaves fall to the table and the floor. I never pick up a bouquet when it is withered. This moment is also a spectacle of beauty. It is the most docile and beautiful way to explain the cycle of life and death.

TA: Can you briefly explain the historical background behind the project? How did you personally connect with the Spanish pagan ritual of Las Mayas as an artist?

LC: Coming to this project was casual, but at the same time surprisingly intense. I saw photographs of the ritual in an insignificant magazine and a wonderful landscape opened up for me to start this project. It is true that I had been immersed for some time in a project that has moved many dark moments of humanity, the series of engravings 'Los Disparates' by Goya, which I will exhibit at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid in the month of October, and Las Mayas were my lifeline and counterpoint to the pain and darkness.

*Studio LITA CABELLUT*
*2024*
*Photo Credit: Eddy Wenting*

TA: Please walk us through your exciting artistic process.

LC: It is a long journey considering that this year I celebrate 50 years of absolute dedication to art. The first years were an academic project in all its aspects, knowing trends and influences, understanding and wanting to make the history of the art of humanity my own. It is a long period of professionalization with the tools, research, continuity, repetition.. to absolutely master the craft. Then intuitive and emotional intelligence are supported by the experience of the material and you can manifest yourself. It is at this moment when you begin to understand art, which for me is the freedom of the rational. In my case, it was after many years of research, self-criticism, and knowledge of the trade. I always work on series, and for each one of them, I choose the characters and models that will give a face and gaze to my stories.

TA: How did you select the girls who posed as your models? I understand that in the Spanish tradition, they are chosen based on looks and popularity in their community, but what criteria did you employ?

LC: I selected models that represent the characteristics that each flower can have, as well as humanity or fauna, and flora too. They are personalities of nature because, although it may seem strange, we have something in common with every living being. It had as a requirement for young girls and boys, just before puberty, because it is the birth of spring, where fragility and vitality are more evident... if we see spring there is a kind of hysteria of celebrating, appearing... and children have that frenzy of being aware that life is 'yours'.

*LITA CABELLUT*
*Onoquiles*
*Mixed media on canvas 215 x 145 x 3 cm*
*2024*
*Courtesy Opera Gallery*

TA: What messages do you wish to convey through this project? What inspiration do you hope to pass on to those lucky enough to experience your beguiling, colorful works?

LC: Get closer to beauty, recognize nature as an extraordinary gift that reminds us that every season we have a new opportunity. That we are here to show off and to collectively form, together with each other, landscapes colored by the perfect harmony that the world has. Although it may seem so contradictory, countries at war and where catastrophes are gray and black, flowers appear reminding us of the possibility and the beginning of a new life.