Azucena Merkel

Mexican born artist inspired by baroque art. Big dramatic paintings, I work mainly in oil paintings.

I was born in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico 1996 to a family of 6 children. My Austrian mother, a psychologist, wrote for the newspaper and my Mexican father worked in Bellas Artes as an encaustic painter (the Academy of art in San Miguel). My father game be a box of oil paints and brushes when I was 9 years old but did not teach me how to use them. I learned staring at the murals of Siqueiros, Eleonor Cohen, Pedro Martinez.
Mexican Muralism started by desire for large works of art. Artist like Diego Rivera Pedro Martinez, Frida Kahlo and my great-grandfather where some of my first inspirations.
At 12 I moved to the USA and visited the Met; there I saw the massive works by Tiepolo for the first time. I could not believe anybody could do such a thing again, so I brushed it off. Still trying to study on my own I copied drawings by Durer (badly).
I moved to Vienna at 15 and saw paintings by Rubens, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, to name a few, In the Kunsthistoriche museum and my search for a classical teacher started. I did not find one at the time, the academy had turned contemporary. I dropped out of school at 17 and moved back to Mexico to work and experiment with painting doing a few years of modern art and studying philosophy and religion in my free time.
In the army which I attended from 2015 to 2017 I found time to make paintings for the soldiers and wrote more poems than I can remember.
I started taking classical painting seriously again in 2020 after a car accident. if not death then painting.
Throughout the years I studied with different teachers from drawing, print making and painting.
I moved to Florence to join the Angel Academy but lasted only 3 months.
Then I met Adam Miller, with whom I studied for 3 years. Here was the Artist I had been looking for. I learned how to make large dynamic paintings, the art of composition. I Learned how to put my visions, dreams, my fears and experiences on canvas and how to do it with the old master’s techniques, well I’m still learning but my goal is to reach the quality of work the renaissance and baroque era reached, if possible.
I’m inspired by the human drama, emotional chaos, the human contradiction. The beauty in the chaos.