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Art during quarantine

Art during quarantine

I’ve reflected a lot on what the artist’s role is during a crisis, I don’t mean the role of Art, but the individual who creates it.

The years of work have taught me something: it’s impossible to guide an artist. It’s a waste of time. We cannot even be convinced, because creating is not rational, Reason is our engine, not the fuel.

But, as sensitive as we are, don’t we feel touched by this sea of ​​events? Have we become colder?

I believe not. Saying this would be similar to saying that the one who serenades is more passionate than the introvert, when in fact we know most of the time it’s the opposite.

The Creator does not exist to satisfy the public – although he longs for it – he has no purpose, I’m sorry, the only thing that is within his reach is to overflow his emotions in … things and some of these things make people overflow, remember its nature, joys, sorrows, flavors, and sensations.

About me, I constantly create works with a strong political influence (I have always been interested in the theme). I always worry about not showing this bias explicitly, otherwise, it would be an advertisement, not a painting. I am not a cause, I am plural and I live fighting not to be a hypocrite. I am as much a hero as a scoundrel, as anyone (some more others less, it is true).

As a person, I try to help some, try to be ethical, and fight for what I believe, but as an artist, I don’t consider I have any moral duty, ever. My only commitment is to my guts and, if they are good, then yes, better for all.

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What is Art for?

What is Art for?

Personally, I understand it as a changing concept that always reverberates the period in which we live, sometimes being a mirror, sometimes being an answer.
Today, I think our greatest need is to defend ourselves against the numbness that the high degree of daily information generates in us. A life lived in the automatic, with little time for reflection and with a very reduced perception of sensations. From this point of view, art would approach meditation, a moment in which we are transported through contemplation to the empire of the senses, which intensifies our power to feel life and, consequently, to live it.
So what is art?
It’s the instant after the car crash, that moment after a robbery, the feeling after freezing rain and the numbness after sex. It’s that sudden death of someone close, it’s the indescribable moment that shows us that feeling is the only way we can notice ourselves alive.
And so, and yet, we are here.
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Study, oil painting techniques portrait

Study (oil painting)

I’ve been trying to find a way in painting that is sensory but avoids naturalism.
There is something about the icons that fascinates me a lot. I must understand to what extent I can style the image without losing the ability to stimulate the primitive senses (heat, cold, hunger, compassion…)
(the problem with Icons is that they are usually symbols, and symbols need context; Context makes painting more discursive; and a work that discourse comes first is definitely not my goal.)
oil painting techniques portrait
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Process: how to make acrylic painting

Process, (acrylic painting on canvas)

Day 3/40. Acrylic 2m x 1.2m.
I am often asked, “Why self portrait?”
The answer is far less philosophical than people expect, and probably the same as Rembrandt would give, “Who the hell would pose so focused and for so long”
Taking a full-body self-portrait is physically the hardest thing I’ve ever painted. I don’t know a person that I can mistreat as much as myself.
how to make acrylic painting
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Distance, Nietzsche quotes on truth

Distance

“Distance; the art of separating without antagonizing; not mixing anything, not “reconciling” anything, and incredible municipality that is nonetheless the converse of chaos – this was the precondition, the lengthy, secret work, and artistry of my instinct”. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
To avoid the massification of sensations and the elimination of the identity of individuals, we must distance ourselves. Accepting differences is perhaps more important than slowing them down, than overlapping them, than eliminating them.
At least in painting this is the way to look for the peculiar, the characteristic, the irreplaceable. And when you look at it you will see how beautiful it is to appreciate the unique, the different from you.
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Between margins – landscape painting artists

Between Margins (landscape painting)

I’ve worked on this landscape which is sometimes scarlet, sometimes olive green.
On the edge of white sand, some purple boulders. A blue sky resembles a dream.
A man in a canoe looks at me, nature swallows him and me.
These days some things thrilled me, it’s shocking to see them in this landscape.
If I don’t lose this work along the way, it will say more about me than I ever could.
And today is any Tuesday, how crazy.
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contemplation, yamamoto tsunetomo quotes

Contemplation (Yamamoto Tsunetomo)

I’ve been studying how I can improve my contemplation habits. I think if I can grow it, I can find satisfaction in every day of my life.
Y. Tsunetomo gives me a valuable clue:
“The most important thing in your life is the goal you are pursuing at the present moment. The whole life of a man presents itself as a succession of moments. If you can understand this, there will be nothing more to be done, nothing more to aim for. Live being faithful to the goal of the moment. People miss the opportunity of the present moment, and then look for it as if they were somewhere else. But when they can grab them, people begin to accumulate experiences. When we can understand this accumulation of experience with objectivity, our problems will seem smaller.”
I don’t know how to fight anxiety better than to live in the present.
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Good art

The good Art

We seem to confuse a good art with a kind of “elevation of being,” a condition of moral superiority. The one who likes or creates art is better, bigger, brighter.
What a mistake!
It is true that for both appreciation and creation, certain knowledge is required.
We can only understand the power of the Crucifixion image when we have prior knowledge of what it represents: the disgust of violence and also the synthesis of love.
The Crucifixion gives us a clue about what is good art. It is not an Ideal (propaganda) or a virtue (moral). It embraces everything that stinks and smells good.
We can only be full in contemplation or appreciation when we come down from the pedestal, and that is what the Beautiful is all about, being the most reliable version of all that is Real.
It is true that good art cannot be performed without knowledge but it’s also true it needs certain brutality, a kind of savagery to access the senses.
Aseptic environments seem to me as fertile to art as cement is to wheat.
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Oil on canvas painting

A painting

How can a finished painting compete with all that was promised at its beginning?
Is an achievement as sublime as the promises that were once suggested there? I sincerely do not know.
It is as if the first brushstrokes were made of passion, while the last ones were made of love.
And I believe this is why we are so captivated by the tragic love stories because they are passions that will never cease because they have been crystallized by tragedy. Is Tragedy the only way to immortalize a Passion?
It may be that a big painting needs to make promises, not necessarily keep or explain that promises.
Maybe great songs are potent for just that, too, for their ability to cement Passions.
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how to oil paint

Work in progress (oil painting)

There is an advantage to being overlooked, the possibility of creating canons. The old masters hardly painted the summer, the heat and the tropics.
When they did, it was the European vision: an amount sense of joy and happiness for those who were waiting for this specific station of the year. the result was beautiful, but sometimes obvious.
No wonder Gauguin was so exalted, living in the tropics he understood that the heat could be sad, that there was melancholy between bananas and snakes, and in this game of contrasts -invisible to the old continent – he created beauty (which is nothing more than the result of harmony between tensions).
My thoughts are suited to him. I’m trying to find the ugliness of summer because there is something very beautiful here, a sincerity unique to those who are sad in the sun.
how to oil paint