Conversations with Eva Azenaro Acero

Today we’d like to introduce you to Eva Azenaro Acero

Hi Eva, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil. My parents are artists, so I was very fortunate to be exposed to many different art forms as a child, but drawing always held my attention in a way other mediums couldn’t. From the very beginning I knew I was going to be an artist, and it has never occurred to me to stray from that path. My whole life, to a certain extent, has been driven by that first love. I got my degree in Illustration and immediately started freelancing, supported by a myriad of day jobs. To be honest, I floundered for a while in the sea of professional artists, as I tried to simultaneously fit into the corporate illustration model and find my own voice. It wasn’t until COVID, which forced me to sit not only with my progress, but my intention, that I began to flourish. By late 2021 I was a New Yorker cartoonist, then a full-time production designer and stop-motion fabricator, then an animator and now, some amalgamation of all of those professions. I don’t know what comes next, but with art at the core of it all I know I’ll love it!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t been a smooth road at all! While everyone has their share of ups and downs, I have faced both small and large scale tragedies that have derailed, at different times, everything from my mood to my living situation. I don’t think anyone ever expects their twenties to be easy, but mine have been marked by depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses that can make even daily functioning feel almost impossible. And to that a long-coming reckoning with gender identity and sexuality, and you have the perfect storm.

These days one of the biggest struggles, for me, comes from the fact that imposter syndrome is something all artists are seemingly born with. Everywhere we look we’re overwhelmed with visual stimulation, with a million other artists who are “better” than us. How do we balance inspiration with envy? Pride in our work with crippling self-doubt? These are challenges I know I’ll always have to navigate, but some days it really does feel like the entire world is against me. That art can simultaneously be a solace and a source of anxiety is a reality I’m not sure I’ve fully come to terms with.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I love answering this question! While the umbrella term is definitely “artist,” sometimes even that word can feel limiting. I am a comic artist, a narrative illustrator, a writer, a painter… the list is endless. While I love gouache and painting, my main medium is graphite. I love how versatile it is, alternating from smooth to rough depending on the tooth of the paper. It can reflect back the rawer emotions through broader strokes or finer hatching, depending on something as simple as pressure; some of my favorite pieces aren’t figurative or chronological at all, but are defined by particular mark making to tell the story.

I’m most known for my comics, which usually cover topics like grief, loss, and memory; much of my work in general revolves around darker material, but my emotionally vulnerable comics are my greatest success. I feel like a lot of people would say my comics set me apart from others, although there are many in my field that make autobiographical, deeply sad comics. But when I think about it, what really sets me apart from other artists isn’t my medium of choice, or my subject matter -it’s that I’m not afraid to delve into the waves of emotion that often guide our actions. I believe that the reasons people resonate with my art has less to do with their depressing autobiographical nature, and more to do with the way I visualize the depth of those feelings. Sometimes joy, just like sadness, can feel all-consuming, crushing, blurring the lines between reality and dreams. That’s where I’m happiest, bringing to life the press of the very emotions that make us human.

How do you think about luck?
I think one of my greatest faults has been my reliance on luck. I always believed that if I was “good” then I would be lucky, but if I was “bad” then I would experience the opposite…and it would be completely deserved. Unfortunately, life is not only limited to “luck” good experiences, and before long I came to believe that I was just inherently “bad,” because expecting pain was easier than hoping for a positive outcome. By the time I was a legal adult, this black and white approach to experiencing life was so engrained that when anything went wrong, I assumed I deserved it, while if I succeeded it was just a pause before the other shoe dropped. It took a lot of self-work and therapy to realize that traumatic things happen not because you’re “unlucky” or deserve “bad luck,” but for the very simple reason that bad things happen to people. And so do good things.

These days, I try to let go of the idea of luck in my art and career, exchanging it for a more cyclical approach: the kindness I put into the world will come back to me, as will the harm. I don’t think its an entirely foolproof method to living your life, but it’s helped me be more mindful of how I treat others, how I engage with my art, and where I focus my energy.

Pricing:

• Prints: $50-100
• Zines: $5-10
• Commissions: case-by-case basis

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.evaazenaroacero.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/birdlets