As far back as I can remember I’ve always drawn. I didn’t really start for a specific reason, that’s just what I wanted to do no matter what time of day or where I was. I remember a dancer I drew, but most often it was portraits.

When I was sixteen years old, I went to boarding school to learn applied arts. It was probably during these three years that I learned the most – it was very intense. Since then, I’ve continued to go beyond hardships and tried to keep my enthusiasm by thinking about painting every day.

My parents live in the Basque Country (part of Spain) and I have some more Spanish family. I’m also influenced by how important women are within the Spanish family structure.

Of course there is! It’s pretty hard to describe the process because it’s different every time. I try not to do what I've done before; I’m going where I’ve never been.

Indeed, I also think that the description of one’s own work may be really limited. Is it really up to me to analyse what I'm doing? Aren’t we a little bit tired of self-promotion? What separates the truth from the fantasy if I talk or think about my own work? I think that describing and paraphrasing my own work takes away all the poetry.

Oh, I’m really glad you found this in my work, it’s really a part of me – and yet we don’t always notice. What people describe as calm joy often takes over. I think we can’t separate a work from the human who makes it so these feelings and intense emotions are always there. What’s interesting is how it all comes out.

I have the impression that we always show the same patterns. Femininity is constantly locked in two separate boxes: it’s either sexy and powerful or trashy and ugly. Women’s strength and virility are linked to the latter, and subtlety and poetry to the first one. I don’t think I paint my ideal but rather what I feel, and I hope we can’t put that in a box. I wish we could approach the body like we do with emotions or nature: without sacralisation or fetishism.

Being a woman is central to my work. Also, we probably paint what we know best.

Yes, probably. Nature is very present in my work as well as loneliness, and perhaps even the cult of the self and the expression of feelings of passions.

Since I’ve always been drawing, I think so, of course. And that’s why making sense of my art by myself is perhaps a little paradoxical.

At the moment, I’m very inspired by a series by Georgia O'Keefe on architecture, with its tight framing focusing on a small part of the building/city, as if by eliminating and selecting it we could get to the real meaning of things. Also, I’ve always been very inspired by Hitchcock. The end of North by Northwest is really beautiful: all those stony tones/nuances and the vermilion red suit that wiggles in the middle obsesses me. My inspirations vary according to the moments and are constantly changing, just like everyone.

My solo show Je plors comme je ris is opening on March 13 at Galerie M in Toulouse. I have another one soon taking place in the Basque Country (Guéthary), near the beach. And in autumn, in San Francisco. I’m really looking forward to all of them.