Gisela Cruz is a Mixed Media artist living and working in Coimbra, Portugal. She was born in Coimbra to a modest hard working family, who taught her the value of trust and ethics. Her mother was a seamstress and her father was a precision instruments mechanic who loved electricity and carpentry. Her old house was always full of unfinished crafts’ projects, so it was easy for her to start, at an early age, learning some basic arts and crafts techniques and having projects of her own, usually focused on usage…

She studied Social Communication and Organizational Communication and, later on, she even got a Masters in Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences. She was a journalist from an early age (from radio news to printed press), then she became a publicist (she worked in the Communication and Marketing Department on a couple of important national projects, like Coimbra, Capital Nacional da Cultura and Coimbra iParque). She also had lots of odd jobs.

She developed a taste for art itself through her own research and experiences, but also through her personal relationships. Music, cinema, theater attracted her from a young age. Her interest in painting, ceramics, sculpture,etc. was the obvious progression, her professional experience as a member of Coimbra, Capital Nacional da Cultura core crew being a significant step in the direction of her own experiments in art.

The fact that she doesn’t have any formal education in art never stopped her from trying out new techniques. And her life long experience in craft dictated that her favorite form of expression became Mixed Media.

During the Covid lockdowns, free of restraining schedules and responsibilities, she really dived straight into her passions and developed a collection of Mixed Media  wall art called “Into The Light”. It wouldn’t be long until her pieces started taking a 3D format and her background as a journalist started kicking in and giving them a severe social criticism character – this was the genesis of the “Hard Times Collection”.