An inviting glow surrounds every portrait created by Riso Chan. Her paintings feel like the warmth of a fire on a chilly winter’s night or the gentle glow of a firefly in the summer evening. Her work shows a world where humanity and nature are connected together as one harmonious being. Leaves and branches embrace bodies like botanical coats, flowers and fungi bloom from warm skin and animals adorn faces like jewellery. Riso Chan is what unfiltered creativity looks like if left to grow and nurture itself freely and it’s truly exquisite to behold.
Spanish artist Angela Maria Sierra better known under her artist name Riso Chan is an artist currently based in Zwolle. Using vivid watercolour and digital techniques on Procreate, Riso creates portraits that explore human beauty and expression. Her work contains running botanical motifs as she combines the textures and patterns found in nature and superimposes them onto her portraits. Alongside her painting work, Riso Chan also offers online courses through her website including private mentorships and company workshops. Riso Chan and her work are currently represented by Victoria Olt Gallery.
My sketchbook is my unedited self, where new ideas start.
Interview with Riso Chan
You grew up in an artistic environment where creativity was encouraged, what is your earliest memory of being creative?
My mom is a sculptor, so we always had clay around the house. My earliest creative memories are all about playing with that clay; shaping it, feeling its texture, smelling it. We even have some of those early creations still around today!
Who/what inspires you?
I feel things intensely, I’ve always been sensitive, like having no skin, so everything hits me directly. My art is a way to release that, to show emotions and sensitivities that are hard to express otherwise. The figures I create are often blended with nature, like the inner and outer worlds mixing together. I’m also inspired by moods I want to capture – sometimes it’s a tactile feeling, sometimes I want to create something surprising or cool- and that drives my choices through each piece.
The focus of your work is on expressing the emotional world through portraiture. Do you think portraiture holds more emotional weight in its ability to explore the emotional world of humans compared to other art forms/mediums?
I think we’ve all been reading facial expressions since we were babies, so we’re tuned into even subtle shifts in expression. That gives portraiture a huge range; when painting a portrait, if I change just one eyebrow, the whole look can shift, the expression will look completely different. So I find it very rich.
This being said, I think everything we make can be full of emotion. I’m making tiny ceramics for my daughter’s dollhouse right now, and even those bring me a feeling of love and care each time I hold them.
Botanical textures and motifs are a key part of your work, can you tell us more about these motifs and how they interplay with the human psyche?
I love patterns and repetition in my portraits, they add rhythm and movement, but they’re also a way to merge the inner world with nature around us. Also, I like painting living things, not static objects, so plants felt like the right way to show that blend. Adding nature gives people this magical, ethereal quality that I love to explore as I feel it captures something intangible.
Your website includes your ‘Process’ page where you show your sketchbook in which everything is allowed and mess is encouraged. Is keeping a sketchbook an integral part of your practice? Would you say it is an extension of yourself?
Definitely. My sketchbook is my unedited self, where new ideas start. I paint full-body figures, animals, plants from around the house, and experiment with colors and compositions. It’s been with me since high school – I carried it everywhere before social media was a big thing, and friends would flip through each other’s sketchbooks, sharing our drawings that way.
Sometimes picking up a sketchbook can feel like a daunting task, especially in our current climate online where many of us compare ourselves to other artists and their amazing sketchbook tours. What are your thoughts on this?
Seeing other artists’ work online can be inspiring and also overwhelming. But I approach my sketchbook as a journal where I’m allowed to make things look messy. It’s not about one perfect page but the whole collection, with some pages rendered beautifully and others just scribbles. For me, focusing on filling the book rather than making it perfect takes off some of that pressure.
Alongside your art practice you also offer mentorships and online courses for those looking to improve their art skills and find their creative voice. Tell us more about how you got into mentoring and setting up your online courses!
I’ve always loved teaching. When I was six, I even taught my younger sister to read because I wanted to share everything I’d learned at school! It’s the same with art. I love breaking down what I’ve learned and helping others on their creative journey. Before going full-time as an artist, I ran an art space in Amsterdam, where I taught workshops for three years. I learned so much by teaching that when COVID hit and I closed the studio, I was ready to focus on building my own body of work, which kicked off my career. But I’ll always be a teacher at heart.
What is the best piece of advice you could impart to your fellow artists?
Sometimes what we make doesn’t feel like us, and we feel the urge to try something new, maybe a different style or subject. That stage is super important, but new things can look rough in the beginning, and if you share it with others, they might not be impressed. Don’t let that make you revert to your old style just to keep people happy.
When I try something new, I often keep it private until I feel satisfied with it, so I’m not second-guessing myself based on others’ reactions. Right now, I’m in my second year of trying to blend ceramics with my portraits, with varying levels of success, but I’m only going to share it when I’m happy of how it looks.
I saw that your latest exhibition was ‘Flora’s Garden’ at Victoria Olt Gallery. How did you approach curating your work for this exhibition? Was there a specific theme or narrative you wanted to convey? Did anything about this exhibition experience change the way you approach your art or future projects?
I curated it in my head by revisiting pieces from the past four years and seeing which ones really stuck with me. Some I’d forgotten about, which told me they weren’t as meaningful to me, and others I’ll always remember. The theme was really about caring for myself and my emotional past; each portrait blended with nature let me process and transform emotions into something positive. After creating so many, I had this “garden” of botanical portraits. Working with the Victoria Olt Gallery set a high standard for collaborations; they encouraged me to try printing digital work on canvas and then painting over it, which is something I’ll definitely keep exploring.
What’s next for you? Any exciting future projects that you can tell our readers a bit about?
I’m deep into ceramics at the moment, photographing them, and finding ways to combine them with my digital portraits. It’s a time of exploration for me. I’m also getting creative with my two-year-old, who’s just starting to enjoy painting, which is a joy. I’m still teaching, but it might be a few years before my next big exhibition. Right now, I’m happy exploring things at my own pace.
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