I am always pleased to see Notpaper's featured artists grow stylistically over time, and I feel so grateful for this opportunity! Recently, I came across some work on Flickr I enjoyed, and contacted this "anonymous" person to see if I could feature them. It just so turned out that Clara Mata—an artist featured here twice before—was submitting work under an alias, a547555. So naturally, I asked her some questions about her experience being "someone new" online.
Name (Real or Screename): a547555/Clara Mata
URL (Blog, Website): www.claramata.com
Location (Where are you from?): Spain
Q: How has your work changed since your last interview?
A: In many ways. I still cut and paste paper, but I've learned a lot since then. My personal work has turned more "personal" and I'm getting more experienced as illustrator. I'm finding my language. I think I'm less interested about perfection and rational relations between images, and more attracted by abstraction, and other ways of understanding images.
Q: Collagists love experimenting, can you explain what your experiment was?
A: Last year, I erased my flickr account for personal reasons. A few months later I started thinking what will happen if I went back under a different identity. By this time my style, my collage work, had changed, and I wondered if a new experince in flickr would be different. Flickr is a good place to receive feedback of your work, but it's most of all a social net, and I decided to come back with this "ghost" identity, whith no name or face or gender, just to see if I got to meet the same people and friends I made in the past. And I did! but I also found some other really interesting artists... or they found me.
Q: Why did you decide to change your style?
A: Hmm, it wasn't such a decission. It was more like a natural evolution, I guess. I really like some of the work I did in the past, but I had the feeling I wasn't completly myself. I was kind of a student, just trying and trying... So I searched a lot, just to find my place. I think actually I'm closer to finding it now.
Q: Did any other artists influence your recent changes?
A: Of course. Flickr gave me the opportunity to know the work of some awesome artist, like elsrGarcía, Cless, Never Always or Falling Apart. Getting in contact with their work and with them (really good friends of mine some of them) has enriched myself and my work very very very much.
Q: Any recent accomplishments you are proud of?
A: A collage exhibition I was offered to organize this year. It was for illustrators. I chose some of the best illustrators/collagists I know and all of them took part in the exhibition. I couldn't believe it. The result was so beautiful! It took lots of work, and sometimes was stressful and really frustrating, but it was worth it, no doubt.
Q: Do you have any future projects in your mind?
A: Improve my english.
Thanks again, Clara!