How Artist Manuela Gonzalez Crafts Dynamic, Textural Pieces

An everyday art supply becomes a new medium in the creative hands of Manuela Gonzalez. Before painting, the Lake Worth artist stretches and deconstructs a canvas—crocheting, knitting, even integrating found objects into it—to create a frayed and fringed surface that merges textiles with acrylics. “It’s a pairing of two different experiences I’m exploring through my work,” she says.

Raised in Colombia, Gonzalez began her artistic journey with fabrics thanks to her mother’s ardent sewing. Her interests eventually expanded into paint, contemporary abstraction and modern textiles, especially those made by women, people of color and immigrants. After relocating to America as a teenager, the artist later earned a master’s degree at Yale University.

Gonzalez’s textural pieces, deeply personal, often replicate images from family albums. “It’s a memory lapse,” she says of her inspiration from 1980s and ’90s photos. Recently, the artist has been exploring a smocking technique from her grandmother’s dressmaking while shifting from pastels to solid colors. “I love saturated patterns, but lately I’ve been working with found fabrics and tones,” she says. “It’s encouraging to expand my palette.”