With ballpoint pen and oil as trusted companions, Catatte's art reveals a world of collective memory, tension, and intricate storytelling. By reflecting on personal journeys and collective narratives, Catatte invites audiences to engage in a visual dialogue about time, emotion, and the delicate balance of artistic creation.

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Has there ever been a time when the creative process felt more like a burden than a joy? How did you navigate that?

Always. From the moment I start thinking about making a new piece until I finish it. It's common for me to find myself in this uncertain land where I'm not sure if things feel like a burden or a joy, if what I'm doing is right or wrong, and that ambivalence can be very tortuous. Sometimes, when I make my ballpoint pen drawings, I spend many hours sitting in front of a paper, and yes, I may end up loving the day of work, but the next I am able to observe mistakes that I didn’t see and I can’t erase them so a feeling of discomfort invades me, but also, the fact that it takes a lot of time to make them I get this pressure to constantly create and produce in today’s fast-paced world and for me it´s difficult because I can work that fast, it’s not compatible with my technique. There’s a sensation that artworks are proliferating at the speed of light and the need of putting your work at the same speed starts to kick. I think that happens to many artists, I manage to find peace of mind by setting boundaries, giving my art the time it needs, taking breaks, refocusing, etc. I always keep on mind that creative process is essentially a process, and as such, the processes are not a straight line in time, it is fluctuating so it is okay to feel ups and downs along the way, I see it as something natural. I let myself be inhabited by it.

Can you take us through the evolution of an artwork, from that first spark or inspiration to the finished piece?

I work mainly with two materials, oil and ballpoint pens. In both, the process starts in a similar way, however, it is the technique that ends up distancing them. I start by choosing the image, it usually takes me a lot of time because I generally look for the reference to meet certain pictorial requirements that can be translated into the material medium (oil or ballpoint pen) based on my own technical possibilities. And because of that, the moment of choice becomes a way of predicting the image as if it was already mediated, anticipating its possible problems in its pictorial translation but also its possible solutions. For my oil paintings I work mainly with archival photographs from family albums, in my gesture I seek to extreme that imprint of washed out and forgotten analog photography by using a reduced palette that generally moves between viridian and carmine, embodying some sort of nostalgia but also the strangeness of the familiar. In my ballpoint pen drawings, I mainly work with frames from horror movies, it is a slow and meticulous process to reproduce the colors of the film stills, this gesture is not just something technical, on the one hand it is a contrast between images loaded with contained violence that contrast with the delicacy of the almost surgical hatched of the pen, and on the other, the transfer of an everyday material to an artistic piece. A constant tension between two things. 

Can you share a moment when someone’s unexpected interpretation of your art gave you a new perspective?

When I was studying at the university, a classmate saw some drawings that I was going to present for one of the evaluations. They were graphite pencil drawings of old birthday photographs from my family photos albums, the typical birthdays that were done in Chile in the 90s. When I was a kid, I loved to play with those albums, seeing the colors of the images, especially with the celebration’s ones, was very captivating for me. At that time in college, I was still a little lost regarding my work, everything was very naive, I guess it was all about experimenting until I could find something that finally clicked. My classmate told me, pointing to one of my drawings, "I have that exact same photograph in my house" alluding to the fact that the reference images spoke of a collective memory, a common ritual you know, that photograph that we all have saved in some corner full of dust, and although those drawings translated images from my own family albums, speaking about my family members, it was that universal memory that managed to strip the photo of a biographical feat and start making deep connections with people. It was at that moment that I knew that memory would play an important role in my art. My earliest work began with the use of images from family albums, searching for the strangeness in them, the hidden, little by little it mutated to the use of frames from horror movies, As an artist I found myself with a great challenge, and it was to shorten the distance between the origin of images that were so different from each other, memory would be the link, that common memory of something we have already seen before, along with the strange and disturbing that may be in them.

What are five things you do to overcome creative blocks or feelings of discouragement?

I let my self experiment those feelings knowing there’s not like an outside force blocking me from doing something such as creation itself, it's just me in a period where I may not be able to make things in the way I usually make them, independent of the reason behind. I know that these sensations, just as they found their way inside, will also find their way out. I think that just as it is important to produce, it is also important to be able, as artists, to allow ourselves not to do so when we don't feel like we are in a good place from which we can get something. The key is to measure yourself but not distance yourself from the act of creation. Something that helps me a lot is revisiting my own work, my first works, my first writings about my works. Seeing the distance travelled, its in-betweens, its interstices, all of that can be very enriching, whether to project something completely different or to return to certain germinal roots of things I have already done. Refresh my memory, decide whether to go back to some of it or meditate on why I actually left such issues aside. Taking up what was left halfway or leaving them as they are. I believe going backwards towards our own work is a fundamental artistic exercise. In this sense, artist logbooks are a very efficient artefact; they help us trace a narrative and put ourselves in a specific place. Producing is not the only way to overcome creative blocks. There are many other ways to fuel creativity that do not necessarily involve material work on the part of the artist. For that, there are many sources to turn to: books, exhibitions, workshops, etc. I think it is essential to maintain artistic dialogue, surrounding yourself with other people who are also going through the challenges of the creative process can help silence some feelings of discouragement. It is an enriching act.

Have you considered teaching your artistic skills to others? What excites or challenges you about that?

It is one of my aspirations, and I hope to be able to do it independently soon because I have some experience already, I am the assistant of the painting class at my university, my job there is to assist both the professor and the students. Is aimed at first-year students, and many of them have their first contact with painting in the class, for some reason, it makes me very excited to be able to see people paint for the first time, sometimes it is possible to predict who will indeed continue to develop a painting in the future and who will not, whether by pleasure or for other reasons, it is great. Although I do not impart the classes as such, I must be present in them to answer any questions that may arise during the course, in this way, it is inevitable to advise from my own experience as a painter/artist and from tools that I know.

If you had only 24 hours left to create, how would you spend them?

I probably wouldn't do anything, it's too little time haha. Maybe retouch some paint from my old work or something like that, but I doubt I can do much.

How do you envision the evolution of your work in the coming years?

I plan to continue working with the same materials that are usually present in my work, oils and ballpoint pens, because I think that in both I have managed to find a complementary language, in this sense, the evolution probably going to go hand in hand with continuing to modulate and extreme the possibilities of these languages. 

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Catatte continuously redefines what it means to create art in fluctuating emotional and technical landscapes. From reflective moments with personal archives to drawing from communal memories, the journey remains an ever-evolving practice of experimentation, patience, and artistic persistence.