The Fight for the Self:
The artwork of Ines Medina

Jacqueline Wilson

The fi rst time I entered Ines Medina’s studio in Brooklyn, New York in February, 2000, I knew that somehow my perceptions about art and life were going to take a different direction. I was privileged to study painting and drawing with her for 5 years, and during that time not only did I learn to intuit the reality that underpins form and thought, but I was able to witness through Ines’s paintings a psychological and spiritual process enfold right in front of my eyes during that time.

In a sense, this enfoldment was a very natural process, kind of like watching a plant or a tree grow into something magnifi cent. Her paintings documented for me the human psychological, spiritual, and physical journey that transforms a person into themselves or perhaps something greater than themselves.

The first few years Ines’s paintings expressed in a very pure form, the quieting of the mind, acknowledgement of what is in the mind, and fi nally the emptying of the mind. Needless to say there was a lot within the mind, and every week I remember being surprised at the content s of her work. Her painting articulated the turbulence and movement of mind and emotion that expressed her journey.

This turbulent process went on for several years and then, one day I came for class, and saw the most delicate, subtle painting (“Divine Offering’), which embodied the result of all her previous work. But the journey certainly did not stop here. This process continued in even more subtle and rare levels of mind and emotion, and is still seems to be going on.

Ines’s work is the documentation of a very real psychological process expressed through painting and drawing which I have been fortunate to witness. The beauty, spirituality and energy which exudes through her work is the result of this very difficult and sublime process. The process of becoming oneself.

Jacqueline Wilson
Contemporary dancer, artist, art dealer