Patricia Lazcano Irazazábal moved her studio from Madrid to the Portuguese Alentejo in 2010, where she had acquired a country house. This new location would soon transform her perception of the environment and direct her creativity towards a manual and material work. Patricia Lazcano puts the focus directly on nature and the findings she obtains from it, not transforming them but extolling them and giving them a new perspective, underlining their intrinsic beauty, without altering it, but granting it new media and textures.
"Some years ago I found in my woodshed a different log. It had sinuous incisions that didn't look casual. It was hanging around in my studio for some time until one day I rolled it over a clay slab, leaving a beautiful imprint on it..."
Thus begins the story of the TRAÇAS project. The marks that Patricia Lazcano found on that trunk were grooves created by the larvae of certain xylophagous beetles. These larvae devour the surface of the wood under the bark of the tree, from the moment they hatch and leave the egg, until they reach their final size and come out through a hole drilled in the bark.
That chance finding turned into a quest. A search that not only consists of collecting but also of observing, revealing and finding the best way to show the beauty and peculiarity of these tracks. Marks that are different depending on the type of beetle and tree. The artist's work then becomes extensive and overwhelming as she discovers an infinite number of patterns, chaotic grids, explosions, landscapes...
The initial process of the pieces that make up this project begins by treating the trunk that will become the mold and object of development. The first trunks had no bark and were deteriorated by the weather. The artist discovers that by anticipating this deterioration, she can obtain more defined grooves to work with. By searching for signs of the presence of the aforementioned xylophages in the bark and then clearing them herself, she finds clear, recent traces. As with the imprinting, the stripping of the bark becomes one of the most exciting moments of the process. These are moments in which a unique trace is revealed.
Once these logs have been treated, Patricia Lazcano uses them as rollers that imprint their image on ceramic pieces. The use of ceramics, treated at low temperature, as a support has a vital meaning in this context, since it is a natural material that, like wood, becomes a record of life.
The ceramics that the artist presents in TRAÇAS are a biological testimony, a record of what was, which we only perceive through the volume. A palpable volume, white and pure. The volume of absence.
