How a Lifelong Obsession with Art Began

My journey into the world of art was not a sudden pivot or a mid-life discovery; it was a slow, steady immersion that began in the quiet moments of childhood.

I have always told the readers of this blog that I have been a writer since I was a little girl back in Mexico. It was my first way of processing the world. However, parallel to that was an intense, almost rhythmic devotion to coloring. I vividly remember the “Precious Moments” coloring books we would buy in Texas and carry across the border to Monterrey. In those pages, between the lines, I learned the discipline of focus. But it was a single gift from my father at a book fair that changed everything: a book titled Linnea in Monet’s Garden. That story of a young girl traveling to Giverny to see the water lilies and the Japanese bridge didn’t just teach me about Impressionism; it gave me a destination for my imagination.

The Evolution of Style: From Impressionism to Catalan Modernism

By the time I reached high school art history, I wasn’t just a student; I was an enthusiast already obsessed with Claude Monet. While my classmates were just learning the term “en plein air,” I was already trying to replicate the light of Giverny in my own homework. However, I was fortunate to have a teacher who challenged my singular focus. They pushed me past the soft edges of Impressionism and into the structural, often jarring genius of the 20th-century masters. I began to find pieces of myself in the works of Picasso, the dreamscapes of Dalí, and especially the playful yet calculated lines of Joan Miró.

This fascination eventually became my physical reality when I moved to Barcelona. Living in the heart of Catalonia was a sensory overhaul. I didn’t just see art in galleries; I saw it in the streetlamps, the tiles beneath my feet, and the soaring, organic curves of Art Nouveau architecture. I rejoiced in seeing Miró’s influence everywhere, a constant reminder that art could be both deeply local and universally profound. It was here that my appreciation for Catalan art moved from the academic to the visceral.

The Sacrifice for the Muse: Art as Sustenance

During my years living in Europe, I existed on the typical, lean allowance of a student. In those days, my budget was a zero-sum game. I often found myself standing in front of a museum entrance, looking at the ticket price and then looking at the cost of a proper meal. More often than not, the museum won. I may have lost weight during those years -a physical testament to my “museum diet”- but I was filling a different kind of hunger.

What is perhaps most interesting is that while I was feeding my soul with art, my mind was being trained in the rigorous world of engineering. To some, these feel like polar opposites, but to me, they are twin flames. My engineering studies taught me to look for the “how” before the “what.” I became obsessed with technique: the way a painter layered pigment to create depth, the strategy behind a composition’s focal point, and the power of repetition. Even as a creative, I realized I didn’t just want to express emotion; I wanted to master the lines and the strategy that made that expression possible.

The Intersection: A Surrealist Realization

The connection between the canvas and the vine has always been a quiet hum in my life, but it reached a crescendo this past December during a visit to Saint Petersburg. We visited the art museum specifically to explore the Dalí collection, and I stumbled upon an exhibition that felt like it was curated specifically for my soul: a collection entirely focused on the art inspired by wine, created by Salvador Dalí and his muse, Gala.

Standing there, looking at Dalí’s surrealist interpretation of the grape, I had a “pinch-me” moment. It was the ultimate correlation. It reinforced my belief that art and wine are twin disciplines of infinite discovery. Both require an understanding of terroir—the context of the land and the culture. Both require a mastery of technique to transform raw material into something transcendent. And both are things you can spend a lifetime admiring without ever reaching the bottom of the “glass.”

My art through engineering composition

Today, as I prepare to share my own work, I realize that every “Precious Moments” page and every missed meal in a European museum was a brushstroke leading to this moment. My creative process is a blend of an engineer’s demand for strategy and a wine lover’s appreciation for the organic. I still strive for those lines and that sense of repetition that I learned to love in the works of Miró and Monet. This lifelong preparation has brought me to a place where I no longer just observe the art of others; I use the very “tears” of the wine and the soil of the earth to tell my own story. It is a journey that proves that whether you are looking at a masterpiece on a wall or a vintage in a glass, the learning never truly ends.