It has been a long time from I wanted to work large formats, but for one thing or another, could find no way to do so. With my recent works is very difficult technically due to the type of materials I use (it would weigh too much and would be very little operational) with paper also could not be.

It was something I wanted to do but did not know how, something that was going around in there until, following pick up furniture for the winter and see those enormous canvas extended in the garden I saw the light and  I found what I thought would be the ideal material (what most attracted me was the idea of using something that has been with me 15 years in the open with all the havoc it has caused

At the end of last year I tried but sadly, the results were not as expected (just no way that my paint to adhere to a canvas, crumbling as I tried to bend) … .to the trash  L

And come 2016, a new year begins and a new artistic life, something that despite being years hanging around my head ( “melted” paintings ), have never been implemented and I’m happy to start to try and learn something what I see enormous possibilities, many ideas to implement … .and although it is something I just yesterday could see with my eyes what we already saw in my head (and coincides) has encouraged me and excited in a way that I had almost forgotten and brings to my mind a lot of ideas I want to write before I forget:

.- First I see it is as something totally different from what I’ve been doing so far but at the same time it is (still) genuinely mine, is mine but different.

It’s like back in my beginning but “knowing” 24 years more , and I love the idea of ​​doing the same as when I started but in a much freer, bold and unprejudiced way that then. All this years, all the experiences, all the troubles, all what I learned, everything failed, I think that is reflected in a very clear way in these new paintings.

.- I also love to be back to savor the magic of the new, see how becomes reality  before my eyes all that dreamed, imagined, all that long ago saw in my head, being able to physically see, to take pictures, to show ……

.- The joy of finally being able to work large formats (huge for me), that I’ve never done and that I love, it is a sensation of greater freedom, it implies the fact of moving freely around the studio, not being (as most of my life) tied to work on a table, but moving around the four sides of the canvas with brush in hand, not caring what may or may not happen, without having to have the minimum care, much more demanding physically but with many more possibilities.

.- On the other hand in this type of paintings there is involved , in an even more remarkable way , an element that interests me and I value so much: chance, allows  it to be the work itself that decides how it will be, getting to feel yourself like a simple instrument that catches you there,  in the middle, doing, acting, without really knowing why or how. The feeling of acting by impulse, without a premeditated and determined earlier intention , as in most of the rest of my paintings, starting something without knowing how it will end, putting the seed of something and wait to see how it develops before your eyes .

I have the feeling of starting this 2016 as climbing  a new (and important) step in my way, having opened a door that was closed and which see a lot of things to prove that I am going to enjoy very much

.- Another reflection that causes me to seeing yesterday my paintings thrown in the floor of my studio half done and that came to my head yesterday as I was painting is the “Praise of Imperfection” and “The destruction of perfection” that , perhaps unconsciously searched , it is what distill these new works for me

I am attracted much more for the imperfect, the lived, the used, the old, rather than the brand new and untainted (not only in art but in different aspects of life. Clothes, cars, motorcycles, watches … etc) and I think what  I’m doing is just that, creating something to the point where in another stage of my life would have considered that it was perfect and instead of that point being the end, now does not mean but just the beginning from which start a deconstruction to end this apparently  perfect beauty and lead to an even greater beauty but destroyed, worn, lived beauty. I have always been interested in the paradoxes and contrasts you can come to appreciate in a painting and believe that this paradox to find perfection (my perfection) in something so tortured , fills me tremendously.

.- Another aspect that pleases me is being able to reach, keeping the essence of my paintings, of my previous work, of my career, a point in which the result, even being similar, is almost completely opposite: one the fundamental fact that my paintings, so far defined by the unequivocal existence of a background and a shape , is still there, but is radically diluted (and greatly enriched as I see it) , and on the other hand , it creates what I see as a kind of “illusion of melting forms” that I find really suggestive and attractive, I think it’s an evolution in my work very significant and important

.- Also makes me think , and makes these new paintings very different,  is the use of the canvas without frame. I cut and prepare the raw canvas according to my needs, unstructured, not caring if turns on the edges or not, with a finish coarse and unrefined ….. , I think it fits perfectly with much written above (random choice, lack of process control), and I think that gives these paintings a very personal and unique character. I think they offer a powerful and different look once hung, fill enough space, with a considerable presence, I feel that attract the eye and somehow call your attention: ¡¡¡ hey, I’m here, look at me. ..¡¡¡¡

Of course it would look also fantastic perfectly framed but it is something that I’m not interested right now neither  worries me the least …

.- Finally I realize I’ve gone back to basics, to my beginnings, in terms of colors and materials, but it’s a spin, as I wrote earlier, with a background of almost 25 years of experience which, curiously, opens me a new world that causes me a torrent of new ideas and materials that are there, waiting for me to catch and materialize … .It is not a bad way to start the year ¿Isn´t it? .

I just realized the obvious, almost the main reason why that attracts me so much the idea of ​​seeing these paintings hanging in the white walls of the immaculate space in a house of ideal beauty (one of Campo Baeza, Pawson, of Silvestrin, Lautner …… .for example): I imagine there hanging (I see in my head placed in that “ideal space”) and immediately comes to mind the idea of ​​them as the end result as the finished product from a creative process led by a chaos of materials, experiences, dirt, physical exertion, even pain. All this creative process so dirty, chaotic and messy associated with this new way of working. And it seems highly suggestive imagine this paintings hanging there, because I recall all that previous phase I have passed to create them , I know perfectly  what it means and I love that brutal contrast .

I had the notion that there was something special that made this new paintings highly attractive for me, but until now had not dawned on why exactly and it is precisely the contrast (always the contrast, the duality) between the aseptic pristine space where they are now (where I imagine them) and the object itself (and Its residue of all that has happened there, everything they have hidden inside)

I would love to see my paintings distributed throughout the world living in spaces like that, would make me feel greatly happy.

It may seem like a tiny change but for me it is a major change, representing a 180 degree turn in my way of working and even of thinking, the facto of not being concerned by even  a single drop coming out of place, to look for precisely the contrary. A  brutal and unexpected change (but very grateful that arrived ) , one step further and not just any one , I feel as very important and I would like to bring good things … ..

As so often before I am painting and have to leave doing it at full speed to catch a pencil and a paper to “grab” what goes through my head, with dirty gloves of paint, today was:

“2601161648

Reverse process: create beauty and destroy

Freedom, total loss of fear

It may seem easy but it took me 24 years to get to do it

Every day, every hour, every minute, I learn things ”

“A new experience: working from inside the painting , moving inside him. Something totally new for me, all the paintings I’ve done so far have been something from outside and is a very significant change, a very different way of working and I love it”.

I love that feeling of the new, of discovery, of knowing what and how to do every minute, every step I take, learning and understanding that amazes me, a privilege, that feeling of ” this is it” , that is coming out what I wanted and how I wanted, there is nothing that can match this feeling of creating what you would like to exist and did not existed just a minute ago

I think it’s a bold, important but also risky step: I do not see a throwback, I am very convinced but I fear that others are not so … The funny thing is that I can perfectly understand that reaction, I could understand who thinks it is a thing of children and anyone could do it, who opine that is a blight, who thinks it makes no sense … ..

To understand what I have done and my motives may have to get to the point where I am now, just as I have been able to make that decision and not look back, of no return … .It is a point I have arrived now and not before and it is a decision that only I can take , without caring what anyone thinks , or being successful or not.

But I think I’m right, I follow my instinct, my intuition,  what tells me my inner voice and I know that has never been wrong. It’s funny but I feel very calm and confident with what I’m doing, happy to be doing it, looking forward to the next day comes to do more, dreaming to spend all day and every day there in my studio working

1002161821 Now , as so often before, have to leave quickly the brush, the painting to catch a sheet of paper and a pencil :

“I compare this new works and the old ones and I have the feeling that the others had no life, were static, they were dead, these seem to me to  have  a “lot more to say”… .

“Though I suggest each line , it makes its own determination, its own choice ”

Ideas that come to my mind while looking at them there lying in the floor of my studio , it is what they are saying to me , what they suggest me ……

On the one hand though it is a subject that has always interested me a lot, the fact that it is the work itself that take its own way regardless of my will , and is something I have always pursued, it is clear that in these new paintings the possibilities of this to happen multiply by 1000.

You limit yourself to an intention and is the Chance , Random  or the work himself who decides yes or no before your astonished gaze of viewer surprised

And on the other hand, although these works are undoubtedly linked with those of my beginnings, I see such a big gap by comparing them , that happens to me the same as when you see old photos :  you feel ridiculous, outdated and out of place.

They seem to me incomparably richer and interesting, they have incomparably many more things to say ……….

If you would like to take a look at some pictures of what this all I have written is about, you can see the photos of the paintings on my website: Latest works

Thanks for reading.