From the north facing slope of Vail Mountain to the rolling hills of Piney Lake, all the way to the towering Torres Del Paine in Chile, Agostina Zampieri’s art tells a story — a multitude of miniscule dots, each contributing to a beautiful whole, capturing the ethereal and harmonious nature of life.
Zampieri is a self-taught artist and architecture graduate from the National University of Cordoba, Argentina. She has an eye for the little things that make a scene alluring. “I create highly detailed drawings using the stippling technique, also known as pointillism. With a fine-liner pen, I draw dot by dot landscapes, wildlife portraits and other nature related subjects, inspired by my breathtaking surroundings. I started drawing with these pens when I was studying architecture in my hometown of Cordoba, Argentina. I would use them to draw blueprints, sketch ideas in our notebooks and immortalize a place or a moment,” Zampieri says.
During breaks from school, Zampieri would travel from Argentina to Vail to work for the town’s busy winter season. “After I graduated, with all the money I saved up from my four winters in the states, I began the journey of my life,” Zampieri shares. In a converted 1979 van, Zampieri embarked on a 16-month-long road trip from Colorado to Argentina’s southernmost city, Usuahia. Covering 30,000 miles, Zampieri reveled in the wonder of what each untraveled mile had to offer. “The complete freedom, the constant change of scenery and the endless amount of time for myself with a pen and notebook in my hands documenting the trip made me into the artist I am today,” she says.
On this journey through 14 different countries, Zampieri tried different drawing techniques, but she always came back to stippling. Ultimately, Zampieri fell in love with Vail, and she decided to make the Valley her home base as she pursued art full time. In 2020 when Zampieri, along with the rest of humanity, was forced to learn to cope with isolation and unprecedented times, she found herself even more drawn to the detailed sketching she had grown to adore. “[Stippling] was my meditation during pandemic times. All I had was paper, a pen and lots of time,” Zampieri shares. “The action of repetitiveness, while listening to my favorite music and seeing the slow progress, made me feel at peace when my world — and the outside — was chaos.”
In the slow traveling of the clouds across the sky, in the falling of the rain to the earth one drop at a time, in the tenacity of a tree that grows through the setbacks and triumphs of a changing world, nature whispers that life is found in the journey, and sometimes, the journey is tedious and gradual. Zampieri’s art is infused with this essence; stippling takes her an incredibly long time, but she finds beauty and joy in the intentional process. In fact, Zampieri believes that slowing down is essential to experiencing true growth and freedom. “A final piece takes many hours to be completed. It takes weeks, sometimes months. My work is a reflection of my philosophy: a slow-paced life, being authentic, paying special attention to details and perseverance to achieve goals,” Zampieri remarks. “My work is simple and intricate. It makes me free.”
Zampieri spends the winter season nestled in her studio in Eagle Vail preparing for the summer markets; this market season, you can find Zampieri and her artwork every Friday at the Dillon farmers market, on Saturday at the Steamboat Springs farmers market and on Sundays in the heart of Vail Village at the Vail Farmers’ Market & Art Show.
To see what inspires her and follow her journey, you can find Zampieri on Instagram @artbyagostina and online at artbyagostina.com.
Zampieri offers original ink drawings, and you can add a zest of nature to your life with her highly detailed drawings on prints, shirts, water bottles, mugs, tea towels and stickers. If you’d like to capture the love of your life in a special way, she also draws custom pet portraits. If you have a space you’d like to enhance with a mural, Zampieri may be able to create a custom masterpiece for you.
Photos courtesy of Agostina Zampieri.