Artist spotlight : Cristina Hernández González
Artist Statement:
I am an emerging artist who began creating digital collages in 2025. I combine this new artistic career with my profession as a Literature teacher and writer, facets to which I have dedicated more than twenty years of my life. I studied Hispanic Philology at the University of Granada and completed my doctoral thesis at the University of Seville on the British artist Evelyn De Morgan, from whom I learned a great deal about Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist art in late 19th and early 20th century Europe. I have given more than fifty lectures at international conferences and seminars on art, literature, and feminism. At the same time, I am working on my latest research book on the origins of art and the expression of emotions, focusing on cave paintings, the Middle Ages, and the Italian Renaissance. I have just finished my latest book of poems, illustrated with my own collages. I fuse poetry and collage because words alone were insufficient to express my psychic, emotional, and spiritual world. My collages are inspired by many of my readings or illustrate my poems. I conceive of them as sacred images that can motivate and move people. At the same time, they help me heal past wounds and discover myself even in colors, light, compositions, and textures. That's why the female figure is essential. The illustrated edition of my recent poems is a journey through love and heartbreak, culminating in compassion and the strength of self-love after having suffered gender-based violence.
Artist : Cristina Hernández González
Inspiration & Style
What initially inspired you to become an artist, and how did you develop your unique artistic style?
I am an emerging artist who began creating digital collages in 2025. I combine this new artistic career with my profession as a Literature teacher and as a writer, facets to which I have dedicated more than twenty years of my live. I fuse poetry and collage because words were no longer enough to express my psychic, emotional, and spiritual world. And now I recognize that it has become almost compulsive, obsessive, a need to express myself. I'm one of those artists who do need to explain their work... I won't say if this is good or bad; I think it's very private, very personal. But by explaining my collages with my own words, with my own voice, the public begins to see, to understand, to feel (me). My collages are a tapestry woven from ancient philosophies, aesthetic movements I studied for many years, European literature, quantum physics, and mysticism.
Creative Process
Do you have any rituals or routines that help you get into a creative mindset when starting a new project?
It's difficult to explain. Every single collage I make is inspired by an episode in my life, an aspect of my work, a book, myth, or archetype I've studied as a writer, teacher, or researcher. It's as if everything I've done in the past takes on a physical form, a soul, muscle, skin in my collages. The idea arises, and suddenly I start composing the collage as if it were a written poem. Some recreate decorative objects from my home, I realize later. It's as if my subconscious works alongside my conscious creative mind. And music is essential. Each collage ends up linked to a song, which I listen to with my headphones, and it stirs deep within me. With some collages, I've even cried with emotion during the creative process. Regarding the creative process itself, sometimes inspiration strikes me in unexpected places, like an airport, and I start creating a collage. Other times I have the idea, the mental design, and I gradually develop it. I'm a perfectionist and I tweak and tweak until it's perfect for me. The same thing happens with poetry...In the collage THE PEARL, for example, I faced a challenge. I don't know why, but maritime themes don't usually appear in my work. I set out to break down my barriers, and with THE PEARL, a reinterpretation of the birth of Aphrodite combined with the Fibonacci spiral, I pay tribute to those women who radiate iridescence with a simple gesture, the elegance of their countenance, regardless of age. Furthermore, the direct source of inspiration here was a cultured pearl bracelet that my beloved gave me. The bracelet, also made of silver, resembles a galaxy of pearly stars. And suddenly, the marine theme came easily to me. The two fish in the background allude to yin and yang, complementary opposites, which is the kind of relationship he and I have.
Artistic Influences
How do you balance historical or artistic influences with your personal style, and how do these influences manifest in your work today?
Easy to answer! I studied Hispanic Philology at the University of Granada and completed my doctoral thesis at the University of Seville on the British artist Evelyn De Morgan, from whom I learned a great deal about Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist art and literature in late 19th and early 20th century Europe.I have given more than fifty lectures at international conferences and seminars on art, literature, anthropology, mythology and feminism. Great figures of alchemy and ancestral wisdom significantly influence the philosophical conceptualization of my work. Stylistically, I try to merge all these currents to create a kind of "aesthetic shamanism." With my work, I aspire to heal others while healing myself. But I trust I won't be misunderstood: every artist or poet can be a "shaman," if we understand it as a "bridge-being" who draws messages from… elsewhere to the people who are here. In my collage THE ALCHEMIST, featuring the beautiful sorceress Evelyn De Morgan, I intend to portray the wise and persistent artist in her laboratory, her workshop, her home, mixing and experimenting, creating her own collages of ether, light, and essences, in search of spiritual gold (which for me is purple, the color of the soul). She is a shaman of color and forms who seeks transmutation through moral and artistic perfection. The art of the Italian Renaissance, all of it—I'm very much a "Renaissance man"—I adore symmetry and proportion. And Albrecht Dürer, whom I consider a magician, a genius, a misunderstood soul shaken by bouts of depression while struggling to be seen as the spirit of his time. Artists and artisans. Because I also consider craftsmanship a major art form. As I mentioned above, I don't only draw inspiration from artistic influences. For a time, I was interested in quantum physics and wanted to integrate it into my poetry. Now I integrate it into my collages, but in a very subtle way... for example, in my collage THE SENTINEL. If you look at it, at first glance it seems like a young guardian of the gate between two worlds. The reference is Hermes Trismegistus, the founder of Hermeticism: "As above, so below." But at the same time, she is a pseudo-apocalyptic, salvific figure who questions you before letting you pass to the other world, to the other side. What happens is that she is the bridge between both worlds, because the subliminal silhouette that remains behind her is a wormhole, that quantum tunnel that I interpret as existing within our own consciousness. How do we open the channel or bridge between the subconscious and the superconscious? That is what that precious guardian of the gate asks us.
Emotion & Expression
How do you use your art to evoke emotions, and what role does emotion play in your creative process?
I love that you've raised this question, because emotion, feeling, and passion are key to my work. It couldn't exist without them. My first exhibition, very modest but honest, in my hometown, was precisely titled "Feeling” (EL SENTIR). For my collages, I usually take a figure, typically female, from a 19th-century painting, which conveys tenderness, melancholy, introspection, fury, pain, solemnity, passion... and then I construct another world, another context, another setting around it so that the whole symbolizes the emotion it evoked in me. Some viewers even end up feeling more than I initially intended. They are collages meant to be felt at first glance. And then to be analyzed, like a psychologist, more slowly, element by element, because they form a complete narrative. And this emotional narrative is interwoven with cognitive and wisdom-based architecture. My collage THE GREAT ARCHITECT shows precisely that: it captures how creation is a perfect blend of science and love. Science expresses itself through geometry, and love through light and color. And the same is true of CRYSTAL: that little demiurge (Waterhouse's Circe) gathers the light, liquefies it, and materializes it into precious stones. Rainbows transformed into gems. An alchemy of colors and feelings. The artist's effort to transform and/or create reality.
Exhibiting Work
How do you feel about exhibiting your artwork with The Holy Art Gallery, and what does this opportunity mean to you?
You are the greatest opportunity I've ever had to showcase my work. I need to show my collages and for my messages to reach people, and the more people the better. I need to find people who identify with me and what I express, just as I once identified with and recognized myself in Evelyn De Morgan, Albrecht Dürer, and other like-minded artists. I feel immense gratitude to The Holy Art and its curators because they saw the light in my work and the vulnerability of my soul.
Future Goals
What are your long-term goals and aspirations as an artist, and how do you plan to achieve them?
I want to continue refining my style, to discover how far I can go, because I've evolved so much in just one year. Many people tell me this. Learning from more established artists with whom I can connect. It's a fast-paced world, and I have to take it one step at a time, increasingly integrating my artistic side into my other professional areas. One solo exhibition a year and several group shows. Obviously, my goal is to exhibit my work, to share it in exhibitions like yours, so that my messages reach those who need to hear them. Messages of hope, strength, and empathy. When you've loved so much and suffered so much, as I say in one of my poems, "love is created and expressed through art."
Audience Connection
What do you hope viewers take away from experiencing your art, and how do you aim to connect with them on an emotional or intellectual level?
A personal and intimate identification between both parties, the understanding of my messages and the same shared emotion. And to be able to help them heal, if possible.
