Art(s) on the Air with Carmen Aguirre

Join Tamara for an interview with oil painter Carmen Aguirre, a Miami native who got her BFA Fine Art in Miami, and then went to Spain for graduate study with Valencian classical painter Amadeo Roca Gisbert.  

Carmen moved to Savannah in 2016 and then spent about 10 years working for the former Grand Bohemian Gallery at the Mansion, eventually becoming Gallery Director. She is a figurative painter working in oil on canvas and/or panel. While she represents scenes of daily life, her objective is also to convey how the subject touches and inspires her. 

Check out more of Carmen's work and follow her here:  https://www.instagram.com/carmenmaguirre/  https://www.carmenmariaaguirre.com/ 

Topics in their chat include:

The sharp learning curve of her graduate program in Spain, where she was thrown into the deep end of representational oil painting; she reminisces about her college and grad school era of not being super concerned about what her art would lead her to, career-wise, but just being at peace about pursuing your art degree for learning's sake; living in Miami and attending Art Basel from when it began in 2002; how she moved to Savannah about 20 years ago after having visited her daughter here many times; how she met good friend and fellow painter Dana Richardson when coming across Dana painting in Forsyth Park; her preference for including a frame on her art to call it "finished;" lessons learned from a past solo show at the JEA in which she had 24 (!) paintings; what are mangroves?; her conceptual painting of an orange LifeSaver candy; her years of having real creative control over discovering new Savannah artists and bringing them into the Mansion's Gallery; her recent series of paintings exploring Daffin Park and depicting the sense of vast space there; and her goals for 2025 of: building up a big series of paintings, putting on a public show, and possibly starting a series of artist salons.

Tune in and get all the details!