PAINTING ‘THE FOREST’
My painting is influenced by art history, native folklore, oriental patterns, embroideries, tattoos, Indian abstraction, pre-Columbian tribal, Japanese inks, neo-expressionism, abstract figuration, monumental scale, flowers, design, street art. The works display an uncanny effect, where the familiar is liniar with the unfamiliar, and the known haunted by the unknown. I am using different symbols and signs to connect the viewer with the imaginary. The imaginary is infused with atmospheric thrills such as plants and fruits as in the painting ‘The Forest’. These thrills exist in the exotic flora and fauna of Suffolk.
I have been influenced by these surroundings in the last 3 years of my study, like a return to nature, I experienced the walks around Aldeburgh, Snape Maltings, inhaled the fresh air and saw the environmental developments of this area come to life. There is a great mistery in the skies, whenever I walked I felt the sense of vastness above me. Almost like Constable and Turner relocated me into their imagery of dark stormy pink yellowish skies – an incredible range of colours the skies have. I was attracted by this manifestation of nature. Seeing the trees move and the wind blowing in my ears was like a live spectacle, as if watching a band of lively things perform. It blew me away, and I am sure everyone would feel the same.
I painted ‘The Forest’ with soft fat lines. The beauty in this painting is that you can distinctly see all the influences come together, but it is much more than the sum of its parts. Somehow the forms that emerge from the composition are spontaneous and have anthropomorphic features. The lines are catchy, rhythmic, circular and sharp. The clashing between colours and shapes is raw but there is some sweetness to match up with the sour. In my real life I was working in restaurants as a waiter and while there I notice the arrangements on the plates, the fruits and the vegetables, the meat and the sauce. ‘The Forest’ can also resemble a dish, a Spanish Paella very carefully arranged on a plate, a pizza or a bowl of fruits. like I am doing those plates and bowls on canvas. I paint with my fingers so that I can feel the paint, it is almost like eating with your hands.
‘The Forest’ is innocence lost, adventuring into the mist of the present, identity lost and found at the same time. A place inbetween reality and fantasy where the body language is portrayed in a dissonant way, dismantled, colliding methodically with genitalia and other behavioral systems that form a the big picture. I wanted to depict a big dog and then I found out about the Black Shuk, a legend about a ghost dog that exists in Suffolk. ‘The Forest’ is becoming this big pile of gruesome things. You can hear the scream of a mouth painted somewhere on the canvas where another figure inspires a festival of joyous explosions of paint. These juxtapositions of shapes, happy and fun, angry and calm, could present a dangerous vision or a continuous daydream. It is this alert reality that is envisaged in ‘The Forest’, the cultural mix, the wild life, tribal, sophisticated and primordial.
