Rocio Montoya is a Spanish artist who cuts photographs apart and puts them back together with leaves, flowers and painted paper, until it is hard to tell where the body ends and the garden begins. She works from a studio in her country house on the outskirts of Madrid, starts the day with coffee and her morning pages, and works until the light goes. We asked her where the images come from, how they are made and where they belong at home. The answers are her own.
Who is Rocio Montoya?
Her first love in art was photography, and it came from her father. “My father gave me my first analog camera when I was 16, and photography was my first love affair with artistic creation.” He was a painter and visual artist by profession, and he is still the person she names first: “he instilled in me a love of art and a drive for creativity.”
She had drawn and written since she was small, and took it seriously as a teenager. Since then she has worked across photography, analogue and digital collage, illustration and painting — some days on commissions for publishers and brands, some days on her own work. “I live on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain. I work in my country house, in a studio set up for my artistic work. It’s a very peaceful place, surrounded by interesting natural stimuli.”
What does her art look like?
Her own description is three words long: “poetic figurative surrealism”. In practice it is a photographed body — an arm, a pair of hands, a face — interrupted by something growing: leaves, petals, feathers, minerals, a landscape torn from an old book.
“In my collages besides using personal photography as a foundation, I like to incorporate illustrated plastic elements, cutouts, and watercolors; I don’t limit myself depending on my inspiration.” The result is calm rather than loud. The colours are soft, the paper edges are visible, and the eye keeps going back to the seam between skin and plant.
Body and botany
Spring landscapeRocio Montoya
The color of fresh rosesRocio Montoya
HypnopompicRocio Montoya
Duermen los volátilesRocio Montoya
Where to start: Spring landscape and The color of fresh roses hang beautifully as a pair. See all prints by Rocio Montoya →
Where does the inspiration come from?
“I’ve always had an obsessive tendency to use elements of the natural environment in my portraits,” she says. “I believe that the human body as an artistic icon — especially the female body, for me — is an inexhaustible source of beauty: versatile, mysterious, and absolutely wonderful.” She has photographed many women since she began, “and each one holds a different secret and charm. So I suppose the greatest source of inspiration for me is the synergy between body and nature.”
The rest of the list is everyday: “light, colors, music, walks in the Botanical Garden, the women in my life, my father’s paintings, and generally any moment spent in contact with nature.” And underneath it there is a point she wants to make. “For me, nature is the source of life, and my works represent a small tribute, a communion — to become aware of the importance of respecting and caring for it. I suppose this is what I would like to inspire: love for what is essential.”
Her own heroes: the collage artist Ashkan Honarvar, “the first person to put collage in my photos”, whose work made her fall for the medium — and the painters Georgia O’Keeffe and Hilma af Klint, whom she calls an obsession.
The story behind Letargo
Letargo I and II began as an afternoon with a friend. “I created these pieces with my friend Cristina. She was a dancer, and we spent a lot of time together back then. For many years, she was my favorite muse. One day, we went into my home studio and started taking photos. She posed and flowed naturally without me saying a word, and that session resulted in a lot of incredible photographs that inspired me to create these collages later.”
The word gave her the rest. “I wanted to capture the concept of lethargy — that state of deep drowsiness before falling asleep or hibernating — by fusing skin with plant textures, flowers, and botanical illustrations that seem to subtly devour the body’s contours. It’s as if nature were claiming the body in a dreamlike dimension, blending it with the environment in an exercise of somatic camouflage.”
How are the collages made?
A morning person, with rituals. “I like to have a coffee first thing while I write my morning pages, then take a walk with my dog, have breakfast, and start working.” Then she works until there is no more natural light in the studio, with audiobooks or music on.
And the making itself is nothing like the dreamlike result. “Although analog collage can be perceived externally as a chaotic or random technique where anything goes, my process is the complete opposite. My pieces are meticulously measured; I make countless preliminary sketches, color tests, and dry compositions before applying a single drop of final glue to the paper.”
“It’s as if nature were claiming the body in a dreamlike dimension.”
What should you feel in front of one?
She is relaxed about this one. “Everyone is different, and it’s fine that different feelings can coexist depending on who’s observing. But in general, for me, it would be wonderful if they felt like a small energetic portal to a dimension of introspection.”
Where do her prints look best?
“In general, I like minimalist, airy spaces,” she says. “I find carefully selecting a few pieces more relaxing than having a wall covered in them.” So hang fewer, and give them room.
Her ideal spot: “somewhere with natural light, surrounded by something natural — a large plant, some flowers, or even a stack of books.” A bedroom, a reading corner or a quiet hallway does more for these works than a busy living-room wall.
A pair, and a piece on its own
Our tip: Letargo I and Letargo II in 70×100 oak frames, side by side with a hand’s width between them. See the collection →
For two or three together, our gallery wall templates give you the exact measurements, and our oak and black frames fit the prints exactly.
Something you might not know
“Something people might not know about me is that my process is the complete opposite of chaotic. I suppose this is an inevitable reflection of my own personality: I’m a stickler for order and cleanliness. Creating that poetic and organic chaos in my works is only possible if I have absolute control over the space I’m working on.”
Right now she is moving on again: “I have taken my figurative collages to a completely plastic plane, and now I am investigating how to create collages without photography.”
The collection
All Rocio Montoya prints, from A4 to 100×140 cm
Printed to fit our frames exactly — in oak, black or colour.
Shop Rocio MontoyaFollow Rocio on Instagram as @rocio_montoya, and see more of her work at rociomontoya.com.