Larissa De Jesús Negrón’s Spiritual Surrealistic Art

At a very young age – nine years to be exact – Larissa De Jesús Negrón already knew she was an artist. She was painting and identified herself with the role of an artist. She found in art her voice and a way to freely express herself. Before she discovered this passion, she used to play with her dolls all the time.

“Before painting, I’d go crazy creating worlds, conversations, and singing with my dolls. It was my safe place. Afterwards, when I stopped doing that, my mother enrolled me in art classes,” Negrón said. “That was the first time I felt I had this power of expressing myself without using words.”

Through that fascination and self-discovery, the Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist began exploring female anatomy and developed a genuine interest of telling stories. She wanted to tell more psychological stories through her art and detach herself from the physical aspects of it. In that exploration, she also found herself really connected to surrealism because of the possibilities and freedom it gave her to tell narratives.

That combination of different elements in Negrón’s interests also led her to formally study art and obtain a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Hunter College at The City University of New York (CUNY). There, she learned about the technical aspects, which merged for her longing of painting the female body – specifically hers.

The initial interest in creating nude paintings began as a way to rebel. Negrón grew up in a very restrictive family due to their strong involvement with the evangelical church.

“So, there were lots of rules of what you could and couldn’t do. I said: no. I’m going to paint nude bodies. That’s what I’m going to do and it came from a place of rebellion,” Negrón said. “Without wanting to, it became like: wow, I can tell stories. I can help others through that. So, it gave me purpose.”

Art gave her purpose because it is a window to express what cannot be said in any other way. It’s full of nuances and it’s something so integrated in her life, that she can’t exist without it. Art also helps her express her feelings, which she finds to be a very complicated thing to do. It’s allowed her to have her own visual language that helps her grow and mature as a person while understanding herself.

It not only helps Negrón connect on a deeper level with herself, but also with the rest of the world. Whether that’s with other people, nature, or God. That deeper connection happens throughout her creative process and that’s how she expresses it with a line, something perfect, or something imperfect.  

Art is the unknown she can tap into at any given moment. It’s that thing in life that liberates her as a multidisciplinary artist and as a person. Through it, she merges different disciplines such as painting, writing, drawing, and philosophy. It’s a way in which she can challenge herself and each day represents a new opportunity to invent something new. Within that open mind mentality that sees no creative limitations, surrealism fits in perfectly.

“Surrealism was integrated very, very earl in my life. My parents are divorced and at my father’s house there were replicas of Dalí’s artworks all over the place. I’ve been seeing that art since I was a child,” Negrón said. “Like: wow. This is art. This is the way to create art and it’s in a hyper realistic way, but also imaginative. There are no limits in what you can create and the stories you can create through art.”

Since then, Negrón was encouraged with that idea that surrealism is the way to express herself as an artist. She understood that later in life; when she developed her artistic practice. For her, a piece is surrealist when it includes elements from the earth, the present, reality, and imagination. She described it as being grounded in her reality. That there’s something from herself in there and that every time she sees it, her mind is also portrayed in her art. 

Her surrealism has elements of her reality merged with other elements that make the audience question reality. She enjoys creating and playing with that confusion in her pieces. 

The Creative Surrealistic Process 

Now, regarding the creative process, it all starts with a quick sketch to have a better idea of the composition. Then, she continues with a mixture between spray paints and oil paints. There’s a lot of layering going on, no matter the masterpiece she works on. 

In the past, Negrón used to work a lot with the air brush, but once she moved back to Puerto Rico from New York, she switched to the spray paints and oils. In that switching process, she wanted to achieve the same appealing aesthetic done with the air brush. 

“I lived nine years in New York and there, I used the air brush for a very long time. I was working indoors and I didn’t have a yard, so that was my limitation. I could not work with spray inside the house,” Negrón said. “So, when I came back here, I now have a yard. I have space. I have access to [spray] cans and there’s also a great muralism culture here.”

She began doing murals and that’s how Negrón started polishing the spray paint technique. Once she started with spray paint outside, she decided it was time to bring to the studio this new medium and play with it. Playing and experimenting with different media is always a result of Negrón’s openness to constantly challenge herself and seeing no limitations in how her art can be portrayed. 

That’s why she doesn’t just stick to the canvas, a museum, or a gallery. As a studio artist, these different places and contexts are as her go-to and aspiration. Yet, as an artist who wants her masterpieces to be accessible to different audiences, she keeps herself open to doing different collaborations with fashion brands and music artists.

Her spiritual surrealistic art can be experienced on a one-to-one basis in a gallery through a deeper connection relying on a profound contemplation of her astoundingly naturally captivating masterpieces. But her surrealistic art can also be experienced worn as one-of-a-kind fashion statements or a dreamlike album cover. Her collaborations span from clothing brands like Zara, Champion, and The Webster to Pink Pablo’s “All I Dream” album cover. 

“I love challenging myself and painting a canvas is more tailored towards what a museum is looking for. What I want as a studio artist is to get into a museum. I want to be in more museums so that there’s that contemplation moment and more connection between the person and the piece,” Negrón said. 

But at the same time, she wants to expand herself beyond museums. She wants to use her creativity in many different ways. 

“Using my own licensing creates a greater accessibility for others. They can have my art. They can wear it or carry it around and I find that to be beautiful,” Negrón said.

The Relationship Between Art, Fashion, and Music 

For the Zara collaboration, the clothing brand reached out and told her they wanted to create a micro collection using her artworks. She sent them ten pieces and they ended up choosing three of them. They worked as a team to design the collection. They ended up making a couple of t-shirts, some shorts, and a bodysuit.

Along with the paintings, the Zara team added some typography saying “Puerto Rico original surrealism.” This was a design decision that Negrón said was for the genuine art to speak about its Puerto Rican culture and her own story.

Regarding the Champion collection, the process was different. She said it was more hands-on. She designed everything. The brand gave her complete freedom of choosing whatever piece she wanted and creating it for a crew neck. Then, she designed everything in Photoshop and Illustrator, and just as with Zara, both collaborations belonged to a global collection.

With The Webster, the story varies a little bit because it’s a curated luxury, beauty, and lifestyle brand. According to Negrón, the process was even much more hands-on than with Champion. In this case, the designs were hand-painted directly on to the clothes. She did many scarves, men’s pants, and men’s shirts. They even made a live presentation of the fashion pieces in their store in Los Angeles, where Negrón had the chance of having her own carpet there as well. 

“[For fashion], the air brush and spray paint were my go-to. Since I already dominate how to control the air with the paint, where it lands is where it stays. You can wash the clothes or whatever and it stays there,” Negrón said. “It’s a very light layer, but it adheres really well to the fabrics.”

The control that Negrón has over these different techniques is one of the reasons why her spiritual surrealistic art is so captivating. It’s an art that you can’t get your eyes off because of how different and appealing it is. With her collaboration with the Puerto Rican artist Pink Pablo, you have literally two eyes staring back at you in a surrealistic environment. 

Pink Pablo and the Puerto Rican creative director Hernán Ayala Tirado reached out to Negrón saying they wanted a surreal album cover, which was the main reason to commission her art. They had a very specific idea in mind with a surreal landscape accompanied by a child and a horse. 

“I worked on it in a very small scale. Working with paper is one of my favorite things because I’m creating a really small world. I cut papers and the paper itself is three-dimensional,” Negrón said. “So, you have layers that you can see from its sides. You can see it’s an object.” 

She loves working with paper because the possibilities are unlimited. It was also an easy project for her because it was basically creating a piece based on what she’s been doing for many years. Doing a background and adding in absurd things in a setting. Her multidisciplinary art came through with the combination of color pencils, oil paints, acrylic paints, the air brush, and spray paints.

This multidisciplinary approach is a constant in her pieces. Just as her use of colors that make the audience feel something. The colors and emotions are intertwined in a very harmonious manner in her work. Emotions do not exist without colors and vice versa. Colors help her communicate what she’s feeling in the moment. It’s the way in which she expresses her emotional state. 

It helps her create her psychological masterpieces.

“My subjects are mainly psychological and spiritual. That thing I haven’t found the words to express, my work has been exploring it for years and these subjects on how I center myself. How I find that center within me,” Negrón said. “How I work with doubt and uncertainty. How I believe in myself as a person.”

How she has confronted many of her fears and beliefs she has been carrying from her childhood to the present. Dealing with body dysmorphia or self-hatred. Holding on to things that don’t work anymore for her. That don’t allow her to grow.

It’s all about confronting these different feelings through her art. Within this, Negrón began questioning what’s behind the body, which led to her to deciphering how she could shape something that doesn’t necessarily have a shape. 

Portraying the Female Body

That’s why now in her paintings, female bodies are vanishing into nature in a really organic manner. 

“I paint myself. The body is mine. It’s always been mine. For most of my work, I’ve used myself and it came from a place of rebellion. From [asking] why the nude body has to be condemned,” Negrón said. “Why do we judge the body so harshly?”

Little by little, the deep interest in painting the female body evolved into understanding that the body is a subject that Negrón can manipulate. One with which she can express techniques, use different materials, and do many things while using it as a starting point. 

She can use the body to tell a love story. A sad story. One full of doubt and even question reactionary thoughts. The body itself simultaneously inspires and impacts her. While she paints it, she’s observing it. As if it were a mirror.

She stares at the thighs, the feet, and its nails. 

“I’m showering with affection the body that for a long time I hadn’t appreciated myself. So, it starts there. So, the art – producing the body – has helped me and my self-esteem. How I value myself. Painting the body is also an act of resistance,” Negrón said. “It’s also an act of: I’m here naked and I have no issue with that because it’s art.” 

In that art there’s a beauty that can be appreciated and a story that goes beyond sexuality because she’s trying to humanize the body rather than sexualize it. Besides the act of resistance, painting the female body merged with nature also represents creation, beauty, flexibility, and resilience.

It’s also about the concept of personalizing nature while projecting herself within that natural environment. While that harmonious blend occurs naturally in Negrón’s paintings, being a woman is reflected directly on the pieces.

But it also reveals a set of reflective questions Negrón carries with her. 

“I believe we set a lot of expectations on ourselves as women. Maybe, the art world expects us to express our femininity through our work and for the work to be nice. There are times when that distorts our reality because our psychological reality is not always nice,” Negrón said. “There’s anger. There are negative things that we carry as women.” 

That leads her to ask herself for permission to express those negative emotions. To allow herself to create something that’s ugly. Something that’s not typically feminine. Something that’s a result of her profound connection with herself and easily expressed in her spiritual surrealistic art.

Because being a woman is literally represented in her compellingly immersive pieces created one brush stroke or spray at a time. 

Along with the literal representation of the female body, being a woman is portrayed through each of Negrón’s gestures, delicacy, and smooth spray blending: all techniques she thinks have a feminine quality. It’s also in the curves she creates with stencils. 

It’s always present because her spiritual surrealistic art captivates the audience through an organic blending of the female body with nature. It’s art that honors the environment and uses surrealism as a tool to tell stories through her psychological portraits. It’s art that portrays the beauty of Puerto Rico through Negrón’s eyes and what she feels in the moment of creation.

It’s art that makes her feel understood.

 “I feel proud. I feel free because I’m creating the art that I want to create. I don’t feel pressured to create anything that I don’t want to. I’m pursuing what I want to express and what I want to feel,” Negrón said. “It allows me to feel understood and the work I’ve done since I was nine years old until now that I’m 31, is always created to understand myself and to be able to see myself outside of myself.”

 To learn more about Larissa De Jesús Negrón’s spiritual surrealistic art, you can follow her on Instagram at @ldjnegron. 

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