Written by Prof Elfriede Dreyer
Tarazona has lived in Madrid, Paris, London, New York and Johannesburg. He began tailoring at the mere age of 14 after leaving school in rural Spain. Tailoring created the roots of his later career in fashion. In Madrid Tarazona studied his true passion, theatre, but was unable to nurture a career on the stage due to his struggles with dyslexia and memory. So it was time for change. He worked in fashion in Paris and in London, where he also attended theprestigious St Martin’s School of Art. In 1975 Pascual came to South Africa for a holiday, on which he humorously comments, “I am still on holiday.” He moved to Johannesburg where he excelled as a fashion designer, winning the Coty Designer of the year award in 1981, and in 1983 he won the Coty Avant Garde award. But it was in 1984 that Tarazona had a change of heart and craved a new creative outlet. It was then that he studied under the tutelage of renowned South African watercolourist Joyce Leonard for seven years. Today, Tarazona has somewhat returned to the rural beginnings of his childhood and lives on a plot cluster west of Centurion, with no television, no computer and no car. It is in this isolation, that Pascual Tarazona says he finds his inspiration, by focusing almost solely on his work with music and books as his companion.
