Naked Truth
FELICIA BECK
I first met Felicia Beck at an opening in Marbella, where I was working as part of the event team. A year later, I attended her first opening at Galería Trenza in Málaga, titled Truth is a perspective. The exhibition title, her work, and our conversation stayed with me, lodged somewhere close to the heart. Since then, her painting has kept expanding through a rare blend of instinct and strategy, as if emotion had a method and method, skin.
Today she lives in Barcelona. She paints on a human scale, works with real models, and defends an idea that, at her age, sounds almost insolently clear-eyed: starting is easy; what’s difficult is sustaining it. In her voice, intuition and planning coexist: painting as oxygen, and the craft as architecture. Nudity as origin, and strategy as the supporting rope that keeps talent from falling under the weight of its own shine.
por SANDRA PEDRAJA
SP: Truth is a perspective that sounds almost like an axiom, a sentence that could be read as a statement of principles. When did that idea stop being just an intuition and become a necessity, something you had to paint, no matter what, rather than simply think about?
Felicia Beck: I had my first solo show when I was 17. I worked on it from 16 to 17, while I was in a normal high school. I was painting a lot of bodies and trying to investigate myself: I wanted to transcend through painting.
My art teacher was the first person in my environment who truly hated me. She hated my soul, my blood, my breath, everything. I remember I spoke to the school leadership, but it turned into a “yes and no” debate, so in the end I recorded what she was saying to me and showed it to the head of school. It was so obvious we were incompatible that she basically ruled that I could never go to art class again.
At 16, I had to do it on my own. They told me I could still pass the subject, but all the preparation and the whole “thesis” had to be done by myself. Of course it hurt, it was a cruel disappointment at a fragile age, but with time I think it was also a gift: instead of going to an art class where your ambition and thoughts get shaped, I was only going to my regular high school 2 days in a week solely to attend my english literature lectures and history lectures, both have always fascinated me, being dyslexic; Literature was hard but with my supportive english teacher whom i had an immense bond with, my obsession with literature was born and learning about art in different time periods shaped a lot of my creative thinking. He pushed me to be disciplined, completely independent, and to investigate alone.
That’s when I started looking at what truth is, and how truth bends over time periods and different ages. And when I titled the exhibition Truth is a perspective, I wasn’t focusing on objective facts so much as on beliefs and ideologies. Because it affected me so deeply, I tried to understand how other people see the same situation, and how a story like this, the way I’m telling it to you now, my teacher, my father, or my friend can explain in a completely different way, with a different experience and perspective. That opened up so many questions. And I think that’s how the idea developed: looking at different people, different lives, and how that shapes someone into believing things that are different from, or similar to, yours.
The Body as Territory
SP: In your work, the body doesn’t appear simply as a theme: it behaves like a territory. That difference interests me. What draws you most to that territory, the body as identity, as emotion, as conflict, as refuge… or as something prior to all of that, more primal, more instinctive?
Felicia Beck: In my paintings, the reason I paint nudity, and I choose to paint a lot of it, isn’t necessarily about body positivity. Even though I paint bigger women and it’s immediately associated with that. And although my work does stem from that a little bit, I analyze it in a different way.
After Truth is a perspective, I started looking at people in a more animalistic way. Not to dehumanize them, but to remove the social layer, the things we learn socially. I was “undressing” that, because I began analyzing people through their experiences, and it was so similar… that I started comparing the human being to the animal, because we are animals. And I think society today believes we’re so far above animals, when in my mental process, in my perspective, it’s not that different.
Personalities develop through experiences and instincts, the same way they do in an animal. That’s why I paint nudity: it returns the person to an original state. It’s more instinctual.
I choose to paint life-size because scale determines whether a figure is perceived symbolically or corporeally. Life-size disrupts passive viewing by activating embodied cognition and empathic neural responses, the viewer’s sensorimotor and empathic systems engage more fully. The figure begins to occupy peripersonal space, which subtly shifts the experience from looking at an image to negotiating presence.The viewer’s body becomes implicated in the encounter, which is precisely where the emotional charge emerges.That’s why I work at that scale: I’m looking for that unconscious connection that binds you to the painting.
I also work with models and, often, I elongate or exaggerate certain features. I do it to create a more instinctive figure, one that somehow brings them closer to an animal than to an idealized person. If you look at the Renaissance, everyone is dressed in elegant clothing and jewelry that “elevates” the subject. I, instead, think that in this world we’re equal. With animals too: I don’t think there’s that much difference.
The “Room” of Naked Women
SP: On your Instagram there are gatherings of groups of naked women. I don’t read it as provocation, but as a kind of contemporary ritual: a working device, almost a ceremony. What exactly happens there? Is it a painting session, a reference archive, a space of trust, a way of building community?
Felicia Beck: Those photos and videos are part of my process. For me, my paintings are very personal and I connect deeply with each work, especially because I don’t paint fast: it takes me one or two months to create a painting depending on how many are going on at the same time. So it’s very important for me to have an emotional connection with the work and with the people I paint.
It’s going back to “undressing,” not in a sexual way, but by removing the layers society puts on us. When the girls arrive at my apartment, the first five minutes everyone is a little nervous. But after that, everyone feels free. Encouraged. The body is something we’re constantly hiding. And we hide it, and by hiding it we feel more “comfortable.” But when you remove that, and you’re in a room full of women, something very empowering happens, something very liberating.
In my process I’m interested in seeing how women interact when they aren’t wearing clothes. It becomes more visceral. And it’s also a way of creating connection with them, because these are the women I use as references. When I paint, my models come from photographs that I or my team have taken. Following is an online collage I make from the bodies or from pieses i have seen in museums or travels.
And it’s also about experiencing in real life what I’m painting. I think it’s important to be educated, and this is part of education too. And when they leave my home… some cry, some hug me and say: “Felicia, thank you. I feel good in my body. I feel encouraged. I feel inspired by myself,” because it’s something you hide every day. Sometimes it’s important to reconnect with yourself, and with other people in the same way.
Evolution, Craft, and Self-Teaching
SP: From those first works I saw in Málaga to the painting you’re making now, there’s a clear sense of maturation. What would you say is the biggest shift in your evolution, what has sharpened, what has become more conscious?
Felicia Beck: I think the main difference is that the paintings are much more developed now because I’ve had time to do more research and to live more experiences. When I did my first solo show I was 17, and I had only been investigating the topic for a year. Now almost three years have passed since then. Investigating , reading, gaining technique and educating myself about Literature, history, philosophy, art market and so many more important subjects, I have been doing this full time since then.
I’ve especially researched a lot: history, symbolism, art movements. I feel my paintings carry more symbolism now than before. At the beginning I painted mostly from emotion, because I didn’t have as much knowledge to embed into the work. Everything was instinctive.
The brushstroke is fairly similar, but now, because I’ve learned more about color and different mediums, my technique has improved and I can express my thoughts more clearly. Before, I would visualize the painting and go with the emotional flow. Now I have a vision and I can place it on the canvas directly because I’ve gained experience.
SP: You mention research, learning, and discipline again and again. Where did you really train? Have you learned entirely on your own, or has your path been a kind of parallel school built out of studios, conversations, and practice?
Felicia Beck: No, I never studied at an academy. Since I was kicked out of art class at 16, I didn’t go back into the system. I got my high school diploma, but the last two years I was almost always at home and traveling. And since then I haven’t gone to any academy.
But the people around me helped me so much. I developed technically very fast without studying, because of the artists I had close to me. When I was 16 and felt so betrayed, that forced me to look for help. I started going to exhibitions and, when you’re 16, you’re not ashamed of anything: I would go up to artists and talk about my dream and how obsessed I was with painting. Some wanted to help.
My ex, Pedro Hoz, taught me a lot about the life of an artist: the hardest part is that you’re your own boss, and how much you work depends on you. He taught me structure and discipline. And then I met more artists: going to their studios, asking questions, watching them paint, going home and painting, painting, painting.
And my current boyfriend, Guillermo Lorca, at first was just my friend. He saw my paintings when I was 17 and told me: “You’re very talented, Felicia, but you can learn a lot of technique.” He invited me to his studio. A week later I went and we painted from two in the afternoon until two in the morning. That day I learned so much. Then I came back for ten days and he gave me a kind of intensive course, and over time it continued.
Influences
SP: Which painters have inspired you most? Which artists have shaped the way you look?
Felicia Beck: I would say my biggest inspiration is Lucian Freud. I’m in love with how he painted. His technique is incredible and he had his own brushstroke. And even when Pop Art began in his time, he never changed. He never followed fashion. He stayed faithful to what he believed and to how he painted. That inspires me deeply.
A few months ago I met Sue Tilley, who was Freud’s main model she is seen in the famous Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995), sold for $33.6 million USD, setting at the time the world-auction record for a work by a living artist and was friends with Leigh Bowery, and she also knew Francis Bacon. We went to lunch and she told me stories about Lucian Freud. It was funny, because in my mind I had this “mythic” image, but in the end he was just a normal guy. She told me that when Francis Bacon came to the studio, they would fight, Bacon would leave, and then Freud would spend an hour talking badly about him, and that was it.
No Gallery, Strategy Instead
SP: At a time when many artists are still looking for validation from the gallery system, you speak from a different place. Do you work with a gallery? And what does it mean to you today to own your own circuit?
Felicia Beck: I don’t work with a gallery at the moment. Some can be very useful, depending on who they are as a person and where the morals of the gallery stand. If a gallery really believes in you and pushes you to help you reach your goals and they really work for you, the same way a painter does for them, it can be incredibly beneficial. But this is extremely rare. In the future, if the right people come to me I’m open. But there is no rush. At the moment, I have a trusted collector list. When I make a sketch of a painting, even before I paint it, it’s normally sold.
I think for artists what’s also useful is an agent or a manager, because painting is only 40% of the job. The other 60% is networking, selling, and strategy. I’m very excited for the day I find my agent, I think this path could also be incredibly beneficial and fun.
SP: You repeat the word “strategy” almost as if it were another muscle of the studio. What does that strategy include: discipline, vision, market awareness, psychology…? Where does it begin and where does it end?
Felicia Beck: Strategy and discipline are fundamental. This is the moment in history with the most artists. Not everyone can live from their art. It only works for artists who are talented and extremely dedicated. It’s a full-time job. And you also have to be grateful.
But it won’t last without strategy. Without it, it might last one year, five years… and then you get lost. Artists have to visualize goals: do you want to be commercial, non-commercial, institutional? What do you want, and how are you going to get there?
SP: You also mentioned something delicate: collectors and the secondary market, that zone where a career can skyrocket or break. Why does it seem to you like such a fragile point, so decisive, so easy to distort?
Felicia Beck: The difficult part is maintaining. There are many fragile points where you can ruin your career, and many have to do with collectors. Theoretically, If I sell a painting now for example €20,000 and in two years someone resells it for €300,000, I can’t compete with that price. Then everyone sees the spike and then they see a fall because I can’t sustain it, and that’s very damaging: it looks like you’re collapsing.
That’s why it’s so important to sell from the beginning to collectors who trust you and who won’t do that. A circle of collectors can push you forward or it can harm you.
I don’t paint to please, or to provoke, or to enter a system. I paint to understand where the human figure is returned to a state of primal clarity in my universe.I try to invite the viewer to encounter the body not as a social construct, but as a living organism: vulnerable, instinctive, and flesh. It exists first and foremost as a body, as flesh, as being.
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned so young, it’s this: talent isn’t enough. You have to support it with discipline, with strategy, with care. Starting is easy. The hard part is staying clean, in painting, in the gaze, in life.
