About The Artist
Jimena Becerra was born in Cali, Colombia on September 5, 1961. During her childhood her artistic abilities were very noticeable, she wrote many poems and won many painting, sculpture and poetry contests. She studied advertising in Medellin, Colombia at the Institute of Arts, where she graduated with honors. In 1983 she got married and started working as Branding and Integral Marketing consultant for the industry, the government and for advertising companies; a career that lasted more than 20 years. Her contribution to the promotion of political campaigns led to security problems for her and her family. This is why the government of the United States of America granted her political asylum.
When she arrived in the United States, her aim wasn’t to become a painter and sculptress but, instead, she wanted to continue her career as branding consultant and to learn English as a second language. But being forced to leave her country in that way left her emotionally affected, and the course of her life changed forever.
It was during a period of four years of pain, resulting from being away from her country, Colombia, where she was born and grew up and which was her family’s homeland, that Jimena started to consider painting and sculpture seriously; as she states: "to fight this pain through her artistic expression”. It happened when one day, in the middle of the night, she took a paintbrush and started to paint one of her most beautiful paintings: “ Metamorphosis I” which, according to her: “ Is not more than a spectacular symbolism of an internal transformation and growth of my own life. In the same way butterflies grow out of caterpillars human beings suffer internal changes due to the circumstances surrounding us. We transform and grow internally to become better”. This was the beginning of a new career for Jimena that, according to her, will last her whole life.
Besides a few art lessons included in her Advertising studies, Jimena is considered an empirical artist. Her research and readings of art collection books helped her acquire knowledge about the artistic pictorial world and her geometry studies led her to find her own symbolic style. While Jimena develops her artistic abilities her paintings and sculptures move towards her own and unique style, strongly influenced by her intellectual studies, her emotions, change of culture and her new life in general. It is believed that her highly creative art, based on symbolic images and similarities tending to surrealism, full of expressiveness and a strong sensuality and emotion will make an impact in the art world. It could be said that Jimena Becerra is the precursor of a new creative style and a visual dynamism: “Symbolism and similarities” that could cause an aesthetic revolution in the world of art. Her fascination for the human figure in movement, the warm colors and the strong contrasts with different types of objects persist in all her artworks. The male and female figures used to represent meanings, storytelling, similarities and emotions are some of the elements present in her works, which take symbolic dimensions in a spectacular and stunning way.
Veronica Smith. Art Critic and Journalist
