Fio Silva from Buenos Aires, Argentina, started painting in the streets about ten years ago, at first sporadically and more focusing on paintings to sell in order to get some money, and later turning it into a full-time job. “I love to paint on the streets since a friend gave me some spray paint and we went out to paint with some guys who were doing graffiti and were already painting the street. And I liked the whole experience, sharing that time, getting to know new neighborhoods, meeting people who walked by and the possibility of drawing on a large scale.”
Today she spends half of her time time painting walls, which is, as you may have guessed, quite physically challenging, and the other half working in her workshop that she shares with other painters. Fio says that it is difficult to answer what artists or painters she admires and inspire her mostly, but she is fond of Herakut and her friend Farid Rueda, with whom she shares projects and learns more about the trade.
Fio’s brightly colored birds in flight have now become somewhat of her signature. “I love painting birds and I have no idea why. To tell the truth, I like to spend time painting trying to express the idea of movement or strength.” She started painting birds a few years ago out of interest as they caught her attention with their behavior. “I like to create a painting where, although it is understood that it is a bird, or several, it also has something dreamlike or fantasy, and in my case, painting is something therapeutic as well and I like to do something that takes me out of the everyday or from literally reproducing what I see,” Fio explained the reoccurring bird figure in her art.
When asked about incorporating natural environments in the urban setting, the artist thinks that “there is a need to 'recover' the natural, a greater interest in the environment, or at least question ourselves about it. I think that in cities, this need is exposed in an explicit way: many gray buildings, houses, factories, etc., and nature 'breaks' it. Honestly, my intention is not to bring nature to my murals, but I like to paint organic figures that express something alive. On the other hand, sometimes I like to work with the fauna and flora of the place that I intervene in to create a certain relationship with the context.”
