Audra Diaz Biography

Since I was little I had a slightly introverted personality, especially as a child I was not someone who talked a lot, and I have always been very curious to know how things work and to know a little bit about everything, I am always learning something and I am very observant , I think that's why I'm passionate about art. For me art is not just about capturing something beautiful, art is a means of communication that does not need words to reach those who see it.

For as long as I can remember I have been drawing, especially in school, all my notebooks are drawn everywhere because drawing makes me concentrate and listen more in class. At the age of 11, I began to take art a bit more seriously and my mother enrolled me in my first art course.

I went to several exhibitions in Cabudare (the city where I lived in Venezuela) and San Cristobal. As a teenager, I not only painted pictures, I had several business initiatives that included my art such as painting shoes to the customers personality, party decorations with foamy, cold porcelain figures, etc. 

Apart from art, my other great passion is nature, since I was two years old I went up the mountains with my family, I love all outdoor sports, I have practiced climbing and mountain trekking and every opportunity I go to a desolate place to camp. All my life I have had pets, and I am passionate about biology and agrology, when I graduated from high school I began to study veterinary medicine but for various reasons, I never fin-ished it. I had the opportunity to go to study in Italy for a few months and take an art course where I learned Renaissance techniques such as egg painting and more mod-ern techniques with reliefs and I started in oil painting. 

Upon returning to Venezuela I found the career that defines me, and from which I graduated with a Bachelor of Envi-ronmental Studies. When I was studying to become part of an environmental NGO in which I had the position of regional sub-coordinator and began to mix my two great passions that are the environment and art and to reuse lots of things that we use daily like bottles, cartons, cardboard, plastics and Polystyrene etc.. and so AudigArte emerg-es. Audigarte is the name I chose to present myself in the multiple events and Market merchant in which I participate, the name is the mixture of the first syllables of my name and my surnames Audra Diaz Gallo and the word art at the end. 

At the end of my university career I had the opportunity to work at the Ateneo de Cabudare, which was the first place where I studied art in my life, as a teacher of draw-ing and painting for children between 5 and 12 years old.

My paintings usually have natural elements, at first I used to paint many landscapes, I've had times where I do more portraits and times where I only paint animals and one of the most painted are the tigers. I have some surrealist works like "Natura" which is one of my works that went to exhibition where you can see a woman's face and at the same time many natural elements such as water, plants and animals that make up her face. I have also made mosaics, I have worked with different materials such as flexible dough, painting on glass, on wood, on canvas and various techniques such as oil, acrylic and pastel chalks.

For various personal and social reasons at the end of my university career I emigrated from my country to England. At the beginning I had not had the time and dedication to art but since mid-2017 I have returned to it. Now I am focusing on art with a greater im-pact, although I continue to make natural elements I wanted to capture a little more in my pieces or compositions certain environmental problematics. Being in England I started to be vegetarian because I think that the livestock industry is the one with the gre atest environmental impact in the world and then since the beginning of this year I started to be vegan so I am doing a series of pictures that express certain problems from a different perspective.

I Also make a collection of black and white paintings with reused canvases of ani-mals in danger of extinction. I deeply believe that images and actions say more than a thousand words, that is why I use art as my means of communication for excellence.