@yogatella

Instagram: @yogatella Website: www.yogatella.com

1. What's your story? Where are you from?

Here's my story: on a beautiful summer day, in the enchanting city of Brasov (in Transylvania, Romania) the world stopped its mundanity in order to rejoice the birth of a little genius later known as Yogatella. The baby girl grew up surrounded by mountains, wild ideas, books, and musicians. Always magnetized by colors and rainbows and being the last unicorn of her kind, Yogatella never found her purpose until she started traveling and doing what she always loved: materializing her colorful imagination into amazing illustrations. Right now Yogatella lives in Barcelona and works on her website which will become a digital shelter for artists of any kind.

2. Tell us about your aesthetic.

Colors. They are my everything and I use them in abundance. Then, the textures: I need them a lot to communicate the nature of the art itself. I am waiting for the day when people will be able to enter an illustration and feel the painted texture just by starring at the art. I also am drawn to patterns, weird characters but also enjoy creating functional illustrations.

3. What is your favourite medium and why?

The slender body of the apple pen is pure electricity. The silky, naked skin of my iPad asks me every day for more, more, more. I work mainly on my iPad Pro but I also use the laptop for more sophisticated illustrations (where I use Illustrator and Photoshop). My favorite app on the iPad is Procreate and I am now testing Adobe Fresco (will see how it goes).

4. What is your artistic process like?

I love stories and storytelling. I love to look at a piece of art and be able to create stories out of it. My own stories. For me, the work of an artist is just the seed that would evolve into a thousand other trees. The artist plants an idea, a concept or a feeling and the world can multiply it in million various ways. Before I start any sketching, I give it a lot of time to the story behind my art. In September I finished a 100 days illustration Challenge. The theme was friends and friendship. I drew one friend of mine every single day the whole summer (from June till September). The process was an amazing experience and I wrote a thorough description of what that certain person meant to me (read more on my Instagram).

5. Who and/or what inspires your work?

People, food, nature- they are my inspiration. However, the absolute artist for me is Hieronymus Bosch. He is the absolute, the king of concepts, the most amazing storyteller.

6. What role does art play in your life? How does it change the way you view the world?

Ok, I will have to write a trilogy to answer this but to be short: art for me is the materialization of your interior through various means. Art is the way I escaped boredom since the day I started creating other realities around me: through stories in my head, through drawings, through music (I love playing piano and guitar) and also entire movies (in my head) of how I save Tarzan from society and help him meet the guy from "Into the Wild" movie. Boredom is the state I have been running from all my life and art is my army.

7. Where did you study?

I graduated with Cultural Studies at the University of Transylvania (when I visited the U.S them Americans thought I was joking about the Transylvania thingy). In terms of art, I am a self-taught and the most important habit I learned in college was to learn how to learn. If you perfect the art of learning, live in 2019, have access to Google and join meetups, events and participate in the local community I would say you can gather enough information to get ready for a job. If you feel you do not how to start then challenging yourself. The challenges (I finished three "100 DaysChallenge") are the main triggers that launched me into the illustration career. I formed some good habits and learned to create in a relatively short time.

8. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Still traveling but this time, not in big cities. I will be in Alaska, illustrating some fish on a sailboat for the local clients and also working on the brand identity of a local mountain themed bar or travel agency.

9. What about in ten?

In the Alps, gardening and working from the comfort of my self made cottage (with solar panels included). I hope that snow will still exist in the mountains by then because I love snowboarding and winter is my favorite season. By then I will master the art of minimalism and will offer my shelter to anyone who wants to escape consumerism and a plastic society.

10. What do you hope to achieve with your art?

What did Takashi Murakami achieve through his art? Money and fame. What did Leonardo da Vinci? Married science with art. What about Van Gogh? Beauty, emotion and color. So I want kind of all of those three situations.

11. Now, tell us a little more about you as a person: what is your favourite food?

The vegetarian Ramen from Koku Kitchen in Barcelona. That's the kind of person I am to some people. On the other hand, I am the kind of person who finds food as a source of pleasure so yes I can eat a jar of Nutella without being particularly hungry. Additionally, chocolate and peanut butter is a match and is orgasmic.

12. Favourite book?

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. I am going to review that book once I finish my website. I will have a blog where I will exercise my writing and also make book reviews.

13. Favourite genre of music?

Soul-classical-blues-rock-electronic. All of those, yes. Sometimes separate, sometimes mixed.

14. What are your hobbies?

My first ever hobby was playing piano and once I learned the alphabet, I upgraded reading from the state of a hobby to a lifestyle. I grew up with lots of musical instruments in the house and playing music was and will always be my retreat. Since I lived in a mountain area, 1 hour from the ski slopes, I loved skiing form the age of 4 but now this is replaced by snowboarding. The ultimate hobby in my adulthood now is running, to be more exact trail running. I secretly started running because I wanted to look good while eating Nutella.

15. If you weren't an artist, what would you be?

Either an actor, musician or a professional something in the world of sports. I loved sports since I was just a sperm and was the first among million of other less perfect versions of me to win the race (this "joke" might be cringely-weird but hey, so am I).