I belong to a very artistic family. My father is Ricolopez. As a child I was surrounded by his work, his canvases, brushes and paint and all of his art books and art touched me in many ways. Specially the nudes with their powerful forms.

I started drawing in charcoal and Conte crayons and I was always attracted to the human body, specially the female body. I attended  the " Bellas Artes School"  in Valencia and I also studied medicine at the " Facultad de Medicina" in Valencia. 

Solitude - African soapstone- The solitude of the female, its voluptuous form arising to being. Private Collection

Dulce Maria participates in the exhibition " Unfolding the Mind" Friday, November 4th, 2005  sharing the space with her father, artists Ricolopez.  The exhibition will continue through November 29th , 2005 at AZUCART Gallery in Coral Gables, Florida.

Opening of the exhibition " Unfolding the Mind" Friday, November 4th, 2005  sharing the space with her father, artists Ricolopez.  The exhibition will continue through November 29th , 2005 at AZUCART Gallery in Coral Gables, Florida.

      Dulce's exhibit at the International Fine Arts Exhibition “Iberoamerican Artistic Development” at One Brickell Square Gallery in Miami  April  2005

Participation at the Fine Arts Exhibition “Expressions of Iberoamerican Art 2004” at The Wirtz Gallery in Miami, August 2004.

Dulce Maria's participation at the Fine Arts Exhibition “Expressions of Iberoamerican Art 2004” at The Wirtz Gallery in Miami, August 2004.

Exhibition at the  “ Exposicion Pictorica Iberoamericana y Homenaje Patrio” at the Tower Theater in Miami, July 2004.

Participated in the “Hemispheric Congress of the Zcommerce and Latin Industry Chambers” at the Radisson Covention Center in Miami during March 2004.  

International Fine Arts Exhibition “Iberoamerican Artistic Development and Integration 2004” at One Brickell Square Gallery in Miami, February 2004.

The female form is exuberant and so sensual, loving, nurturing, soothing. It is about shapes to be looked at, touched, explored, admired and experienced. Almost all my drawings and sculptures are of women and women's parts.

 I had the need to express myself in a different way, a more plastic way, one where I could interchange my energy with the medium. This is why I became interested in sculpture. I studied Interior Design in Miami and took Architecture, nude drawing and Art classes at Miami - Dade Community College. At that moment is when I discovered the need to deconstruct the human form into parts like the Deconstructivism method in Architecture. 

I was also influenced by the cover of a feminist book of the 70's. The cover was the photograph of the skin of a female body, hollow, hanging from a hanger as if ready to be used and disposed. It made a very deep impression in my soul and since then I have been obsessed by the female form. I started experimenting with plaster, it was soft, giving and I could play with it. The female forms started to appear with all their sensuality.

One day I felt the desire for something more permanent, more challenging and it is then when I discovered stone, its beauty and appeal. I attended Sculpture workshops in San Diego, California, under the Maestro de la Pietra, Ante Marinovic during the summer of 2003.

I was specially drawn to the contrast of the hard stone with the female's soft form, the emphasis on the curves, the protuberances and the voids that invite us in, the organic experience of nature as rock and flesh. Two opposites becoming one in HER.

Spirit -Black and White Colorado Alabaster on African Cedar and Black Marble base. Female forms, the Spirit of what is Female.

Muse - Pink Colorado Alabaster on Italian Translucent White Alabaster - Female torso emphasizing the hips as the grounding form of a woman. Private Collection.

Rebirth - Brazilian soapstone -Female forms unfolding becoming Woman freeing itself.

Essence of Women - Brazilian Soapstone- Female voids and mounds becoming One.

Glow - Orange Utah Alabaster on Italian Translucent White Alabaster. Private Collection.

In my sculptures the female representation is related to women's sexuality and our freedom to express it, the need to recognize it and embrace it.

 My sculptures must be seen from all sides. One form interlaces with another in a continuous dance, in a intricate symphony of bursting sensuality. Void spaces and bulging round forms.

The sexual forms holding us like chains  asking to break away. My  female forms are born and freed liberating all that is female, all the power within a woman's essence.

 Evolution - Brazilian Soapstone - Folds forming into what she is.

Drawings:

 I strive for the freedom of everything female and my way to achieve it is to free the woman from within the stone and bring her to life, to be seen and be touched. My work needs to be touched by the eyes and hands of those who recognize it and get stirred by it.

 I am also inspired by poetry. My prime inspiration is and always has been Pablo Neruda's " Twenty Love Poems" sensuous symbolism of love and earthly flesh yearning. Words inspiring my mind and passion transforming in the form of the hard stone becoming the soul of my most fervid imagination.

If you are interested  please  Contact DULCE MARIA

To see more of  Dulce's Sculpture click here.

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