GABRIELA HANDAL

My name is Gabriela Handal and I am a draughtsman from the Republic of Panama. In 2013 I moved to the United States to study at the New York Academy of Art and in 2015 I earned my Master of Fine Arts degree, majoring in drawing with a concentration in anatomy.

Since then, I have stayed in New York and continue to produce and show my work in different places.

My work revolves around studying Nature and the human body via drawing with graphite of charcoal over paper. I strongly gravitate towards the portrait, so much so there’s little to no background composition or even much of the rest of the human body in my work.

However, I continue to not understand how the corner of the lip becomes a node and then a nasolabial fold and then it swerves into the sublabial sulcus, so I must draw these things over and over again with the hope I will understand someday.

One big reason I draw is I want to see a mental image with my own eyes, so when I draw it’s solidly objectified on the paper. Another big reason I draw is I want to study the body, as mentioned previously.

Nature and the human body are straight up miracles and we get to inhabit both every day. Throughout time we have had a torrid relationship with our human body, right up to the present day.

While I make work, I engage in the adoration of Nature and the human body. Once the work is finished and other people look at it, I hope the respect and reverence I feel for both will be contagious.