About María José Calderón Vázquez:

My name is María José Calderón (madartia on social media), and I am an artist and architect from Seville, Spain. I grew up in a small town with my mother and grandparents, surrounded by many plants and animals. As an only child, I used drawing and books from an early age to escape reality and inhabit other worlds. I ended up studying architecture at the university of Seville, a career that although highly technical, had a creative side that I did not want to lose. But art never abandoned my mind and from my home studio, I have been combining my work as an architect with private illustration commissions and personal works for the last few years, always seeking to improve my skills and try out new mediums.

Artist Statement

I like to find beauty where apparently there is none, beauty that lives in the everyday, in the decadent or abandoned in the hands of time and nature. My artworks reflect upon human relationships with nature and their own emotions. They are delicate and detailed figurative pieces with surreal touches, where animals, vegetation, and architectural elements are vehicles to depict themes such as time, nostalgia, childhood, and loss, and to drive attention to the importance of the little things that normally go unnoticed in our daily lives.