Nieves, you once said that as a painter, growing up in Andalusia had a profound impact on your understanding of images. In what ways?
Andalusia gave me a way of looking at art before I even knew what looking meant. Huelva is where I was born, but Seville is where I trained as a painter, I studied Fine Arts there and later did a research master’s, and I spent countless hours in the Museo de Bellas Artes studying Zurbarán, Ribera, Velázquez, trying to understand how they built presence and figure. The symbols and atmospheres of that world appear in my painting effortlessly; I don’t go looking for them, they’re already inside me. The southern light, a certain solemnity, a certain way of inhabiting the body, all of that enters the painting without my consciously deciding it.
Apparently Zurbarán’s The Virgin of the Caves is a particularly special painting for you — you even referenced it recently in your own work.
I would even say it’s my favorite work, if I had to choose. I remember sitting in front of it for long stretches, imagining her as a contemporary diva, powerful and magnetic. I always felt I owed something to that image, that at some point I’d have to bring to life what had been brewing in my imagination for so many years. My work is nothing more than that: a gesture of devotion and respect for painting, but also for my own ideas.
“That point of contact fascinates me: entirely contemporary garments treated with the same luminous attention as a 17th century robe.”
The devotion and respect for the Spanish Baroque style is so beautifully evident in your work.
Andalusian culture, both aesthetically and spiritually — or perhaps ritually — is intimately bound to the Baroque, and from the moment you’re born that’s part of your imaginary. But it was in Seville, studying the masters up close, that I truly understood its force. What draws me most, without a doubt, is the light. The Baroque understood something that obsesses me: that light doesn’t just illuminate, it directs the gaze, it establishes hierarchy, it dramatizes. It’s a form of power in itself.
I love the use of light in your portraits and paintings of women, particularly how it reflects off the modern clothing you dress them in: puffer jackets, leather coats…
I seek that same tension between matte and shine, between what absorbs light and what returns it. A puffer jacket has a very particular surface, those quilted volumes create shadows that are almost architectural, geometric, and leather has that deep sheen that recalls Baroque fabrics so closely. That point of contact fascinates me: entirely contemporary garments treated with the same luminous attention as a 17th century robe.
These modern subversions really bring me so much delight, like seeing pictures of the Pope wearing Nike trainers.
I love representing the 21st century through these contemporary attributes, incorporating icons, objects, and materials that are part of our present and that define us as a society. I’ve also always liked the idea of fictionalizing part of reality in order to create. I think it’s impossible to look at a Saint Ursula painted in 1600 with the same eyes as someone from the 17th century, because our ideas about the world, spirituality, and society are completely different now. When I looked at the saints in Baroque paintings, I liked imagining different stories for them — stories closer to the idea of womanhood I live with. And that’s what I try to bring into the painting: a questioning of social canons.
Do you create these back stories for all the women in your paintings? Or are they anonymous?
Most of them are fictional women, yes, but they are built from a mix of memory, observation, and pictorial necessity. I almost always start from photographic references that I transform before moving them to canvas. Some images carry a story tied to iconography, for example, I make many references to real saints, drawing on both their traditional attributes and invented ones. But I’m also building characters with no fixed identity.
What about their clothing, their posture, their hair, their gaze? Is that all imagined or invented too?
The contemporary clothing I paint is often clothing I’ve worn myself, or seen on the street, fashion has always interested me, and yes, I often work from photographs so as not to lose that detail. The hair, on the other hand, is more of a symbolic decision: I let it grow almost to the point of unreality, because that’s where I place the idea of hair as archive, as wisdom, as a connection to something deeper. As for the gaze, it’s exactly the kind of gaze I want to give back to the viewer: women who know they’re being watched and don’t lower their eyes, but who also don’t need to tense their bodies to hold that gaze. They don’t return submission or easy seduction, they return awareness. The relaxation in the posture is itself a form of power, the power of someone who has nothing to prove.
It reminds me of the saying about Spanish Baroque portraits: that they are trying to capture the soul.
Very much so. I’m drawn to the idea that a portrait can be a place of truth rather than mere representation. I’m not after physical likeness as the end goal, I want there to be something real in there, a presence that goes beyond the surface.
How does your approach change when working on a portrait of a real person, like your album cover for Lily Allen’s West End Girl?
That was different! The project came through Leith Clark, the creative director, who already knew my work. There were conversations and a video call with Lily, but the image itself emerged from my own pictorial language, it wasn’t imposed, it was an organic convergence between her world and mine. Painting someone real always adds a different layer of responsibility: you want the person to recognize themselves, but you also want the image to keep its own pictorial truth.
That was a big moment for your career, no? Did you feel a change due to the success of that piece?
I didn’t experience it as something sudden, I’ve been working steadily and quietly for many years, so what happened with the cover felt more like an expansion of something already built. It brought visibility and new opportunities, but my day-to-day in the studio is still the same. I still need the same time, the same calm, the same concentration to paint. Because I work in oil, I build each image in layers, letting time act on the painting the way it acts on any bond between people. Depth doesn’t come from a single gesture but from accumulation: each layer doesn’t erase the one before, it transforms it, stains it, turns it into something else. It’s a slow process. I need continuity and silence for the image to gain density.
Do you see yourself continuing to explore the female form in this medium in the future?
Yes, I want to keep pulling on the same thread, that of invisible female genealogies, though I don’t yet know which specific figures. What I do know is that I’ll keep searching for women who carry something in the body that history tried to silence, and finding a way to bring them into the present without losing their mythic or spiritual origin.