Oaia Peruarena Tellechea

Irun, Gipuzkoa 1972

She has lived in Vera de Bidasoa (Navarra) since the age of 5. She has been drawing and painting since childhood, she loved spending her afternoons drawing with her grandparents and receives her first painting classes from Ignacio Larramendi.

She drops out of school at the age of 17 and attends Polychrome furniture painting classes. She also learns to restore furniture self-taught, dedicating herself to it for about 5 years, but never stops painting.

During this time she attends painting classes with the help of different artists: Iñaki Álvarez (San Sebastian), Maite Unzurrunzaga (Zarauz), Tomas Sobrino (Elizondo) and José Mari Apezetxea (Errazu). For 6 years he attends the outdoor painting summer courses taught by Jose Mari Apezetxea and Tomas Sobrino in Baztan. 

At first she approaches the painting inspired by the landscape and the gaze of the great Impressionists: Cézanne, Van Gogh, Monet... and within the Basque artists José Mari Apezechea, Menchu Gal etc.

But as she gets deeper and pushed by the restlessness and dissatisfaction, of not finding a way of expression that works for her according to what she wants to express, she begins to look in other directions. Then the works of Esteban Vicente (Segovia), Rafael Ruiz Balerdi, Zao Wo ki, Joan Mitchell and a long etc. 

Thus she begins to abstract herself, seeking to express herself more and more freely and thus turning painting into a channel of expression of the being.

"In a world subject to forms and judgments, painting offers me a space where I can let myself BE, where it doesn't matter if I'm a woman or a man, big or small, young or old, a place where the limits only depend on me, from as far as I'm willing to let myself go.”