Maximo Laura: Visiting with a Visual Poet

Escaping from the monochromatic concrete landscape of a Lima suburb into the private studios of Máximo Laura is like stepping through an exotic portal. Welcomed by Máximo’s dazzling smile into a virtual kaleidoscope of color and texture, alive with glowing animals and ancient images, one immediately senses the presence of a visionary artist.

Upon entering his private realm, one is immediately struck by Laura’s brilliant use of color. Each vibrant piece leaves the viewer’s senses dazzled and imagination ignited. Having the privilege to visit with Máximo twice, I reached out to learn more about his personal relationship with color and his creative journey as an Andean weaver.

Your weavings are very distinctive, and your use of color is singular. Where do you think your sense of color comes from and what inspires you?

Since I can remember, I have been an obsessive maniac about the search for color through the physical, virtual, artistic, and natural worlds. A flower, butterfly, or fire might especially astonish me. Natural phenomena such as dawn, dusk, flowering, flight, journeys, etc., are ephemeral and all are a part of my repertoire. I delight in living life surrounded by colors.

Growing up in a weaving village in Peru, did you have any “formal” art training with respect to color or design?

I began as an intuitive, self-taught artist, as there were very few classes available. Later I became a disciplined researcher and experimenter. I am a fanatical collector of books, especially ones about color technique and theory. My main academic resources have been books about artists and painters of any style who emphasize color.

Each of your weavings seems to have a fantastic blending and shading of each color family. How do you achieve that?

Choosing the colors is the aesthetic “birth” of a work beginning with appropriately balancing the selection of colors, evaluating the hues for correct intensity in a group of color, and finally unifying it all by color temperature. The mixture of thread is then selected for the degradations, distortions, dramatizations that are used to soften, blur, transition, connect, excite, or even to create discord. I strive to achieve the illusion of new colors through the mixing of the colors. I work with more than two hundred colors, which I can mix virtually without limit.

Your colors are so fabulously rich and striking. Does the type of fiber you use affect the coloration?

I mainly use alpaca because it is naturally soft, shiny, and warm, but I also use other natural fibers—animal and vegetable—as well as mixtures of these with synthetic fibers. Each fiber reflects light differently, enriching the varieties of color.

I am struck by the intensely spiritual nature of your weaving. Where does this come from and what is its importance to you?

I have a personal preoccupation with my spirituality and my soul. I think it comes from my encounters since childhood with beliefs, rituals, and holidays tied to the spirituality of life. As a child, I was influenced by my parents, who were deeply rooted in Catholicism, as well as my religious village and its patron saint festivals. As a youth, I encountered the millennial Andean worldview. Its profound spirituality and validity for contemporary times moved me. I feel that the richness of humanity lies in its energy, faith, and its essence of the transcendent. In my Work, I try to demonstrate this in a deliberate, gestural, and suggestive manner through the use of color and symbols that are related most directly to spiritual content.

What advice can you offer to other fiber artists?

Understand that coloration is a magical encounter discovered through process. For me, a piece is only finished when I feel that there is nothing lacking and nothing extra.