Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Fashion Study

This is part of a series of paintings focused on the investigative study of the human body. This painting goes back to my fashion roots rather than my more traditional portrait paintings.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

A New Stage





As my journey continues as an artist, as a graphic designer , illustrator and painter I can now add being a sculptor. This is something new for me, something I have never done before. Life has brought this to me, and the day has come. I have begun to model matter (clay). It is fascinating to be able to shape matter, this divine matter. It can be adjusted , enlarged , shrunk. Everything can be molded to your desire. You could say this is my new love, we will see what will come from this. My interest in the human figure and the human face , shall further be developed. This is a new point of departure to further my life from.

An Introduction Pt.2

My life as an artist has been a life long process of self-knowledge, inner search and my path to freedom. I consider painting is a meditative act, a form of prayer which has accompanied me all my life, it has been a spiritual journey in all the sense of the word. This has lead me into studying the Great Masters of Art and also many Spiritual Masters. Through the daily act of introspecting, I saw art and life coming together in a most interesting way.

I have also found resonance in artists like Vlaminck who also used to say that the only way to communicate was through color, later in his life he decided it was through form and in his final days through feeling, Derrain talked about bliss and Villon about inspiration. I think as artists they were all seeking the same: to find themselves in their paintings, to create a relationship with their public through feeling, and to find Truth. Braques and Balthus also considered painting a form of meditation, a way to access God. Cezanne, for example, believed there is a secret rhythm underlying creation, he said: “only in nature undefiled by man, eternal truth can be discovered”.

Many of my beloved artists since the Renaissance until the 20st century, felt this connection and had a glimpse of the divine while painting , they were genius in their creative endevours but some failed to apply their knowledge to their daily lives.

In life, people relate to others like the colors and shapes relate in a painting. When there is relationship you feel a flow, peace, communion. When there is chaos, relationship is destroyed. In this way I would like to put together art, life and healing. Any artist that finds the way to create relationships in his paintings and then applies that knowledge to life, has found the alchemic secret, the transformation of our life with all it’s dramas to happiness, peace, joy and bliss. Negative emotions are destroying our society and I propose that art is a path to healing our lives. Separation, and fragmentation, disjointedness to me is the opposite of order, beauty and relationship. It is not different from a painting that has not been achieved, in which there is chaos instead of order and beauty, understanding that there is an implicate order, relationship and beauty in abstract painting too, like in Pollock, Kandinsky and Rothko. Painting is this marvelous tool to achieve that integrity. If we can achieve “relationship” in a painting, we can achieve the same in our life with others and in our body- health and wellness, a feeling of flowing easily in life.

This is the beginning of a course in art, life and spirituality. It is experimental like all of Picasso’s paintings, and exploration into insight and the movement of thought. In a similar fashion the course that I propose invites all of my students to discover for themselves the truth of the above statements. Intention is all that is required, intention of understanding what is art, what is life and healing. What is important is that the artist or student has an intention of expressing and knowing himself. All experiments need a method and for this one I propose that it be through enjoyment. Every creative act is an act of giving and based on Derrain’s philosophy, I close this matter in a positive note by stating that art is JOY. It is our responsibility to be artists, creators, 24 hours a day to enhance our lives.

An Introduction Pt.1

In searching for a way to teach my students portraiture and the human figure, I found out I was dealing with an issue beyond the basic elements of art. I discovered in my search that relationship is the “constant” in art work between: form, color, and values which are different in every painting. Each artwork is a separate world, I came to realize that I couldn’t use the same formula for every portrait or painting, however, I always had to look for a way to make the painting work and that meant that the relationship of form, values (light and shadows) and color had to create a unique harmony and order in the space designated by the canvas. It is in the feeling I get from the painting that I can tell if relationship is there or not.

When I paint, colors are talking to me and they direct the path toward the end being pursued. Of course, all elements are indispensable for painting. For example, color is vibration, like all that exists in the universe and it talks to you through feeling. Form depends on space, but space doesn’t need form to exist. Ultimately they are both relative but I deal with both in a painting. Connected to the concept of space, there is one invisible element- time- which is abstract and paradoxical.

Creativity emerges in the most elusive element: time- the present moment. The past and the future are abolished in the creative act, you are immersed in a state of Being. When one is submerged like this in the painting one is not aware of the emptiness arising, it is a sublime moment in which one flows. It happens without you noticing, you fall into that magical moment. The artist needs the space in a canvas to paint and inner space, emptiness, a meditative state in our mind for creativity to emerge. Since all is vibration, there is an energy exchange between the artist and his canvas This is the healing element of art, as the soul enjoys a state of being joined with everything that exists. “That” which is unknown suddenly surfaces and the relationship I am seeking occurs in the canvas.

One, as the creator, has the power to make lines, forms, shapes, colors, harmonize in that certain “order” created on a canvas. Actually, in portraiture a strange triad occurs in the relationship created between the subject, the artist and the canvas. The student needs to learn how to see differently, this is, instead of fragmenting and separating the parts to be drawn and painted, the student needs to see in a most total way: model, cloth, background, all together, blended and only in terms of values, shadows and lights….The artist could use this understanding so that paintings are whole, complete, total.