-Between the great artists of history you´ll have your preferences...
It is so arbitrary to name just some... but alright, I start with a great idol, Francisco Goya, yes, the Goya of the horrors of war, the black paintings, his etchings... El Greco... With them we have already entered the modern era.
My reduced and unjust list also shows Piet Mondrian. Peculiarly, when younger I didn´t like him very much, I missed the drama. But Mondian himself is the drama. I am still fascinated by his obsession, his dedication, his religious search, which made him concentrate on the most pure, the unique, the absolute, in colour and line. (He abhorred this diagonal line...!)
-What does painting mean for you? Painting is for me a physical and a spiritual work at the same time. I am enriched by the physical effort and concentration. I don´t have the "painting" in my head, that only needs to be painted. No, for me painting is a process, going round and round the canvas, as it lays on the floor, or stands on the easel, like a mystical dance,, applying pictorial mass, dirtying my hands, seeding colours, harvesting images... It is drama, action, a process. A finished painting is something else, it could be art, but maybe it is only the reflection of a process, and is the search really the art.
-How would you decribe your style? Dramatic abstract, considering "dramatic" the spine of my work. I find it difficult to individualize my paintings, I work a lot in series, like a cartoon without figuration. Up to a whole exhibition I can consider as one work. It is a quasi narrative abstraction, with a "leitmotive" and symbols, which refer only to themselves. After all, that´s what abstraction is, the symbol not contaminated by meaning; absolute and divine. Interpretation is human, to apply the play of symbols to situations.
-Do you have any hours or moments during the day specifically fertile to work? Without any doubt the morning. I need to feel strong, to be able to concentrate all my senses in state of alert. The night seves me to reflect; then I can see where or why something has escaped me, or I can see what I´ve done well. The night serves me most of all to contemplate, to dream, or to think about an interview like this. But sometimes the discovering of a failure in a painting haunts me like a nightmare, until it culminates in making me grab a big brush and repaint the whole thing. Normally I don´t regret these actions, for, although subconciously, I knew that there was no other solution than the radical one. -When does a painting starts getting its form? It is difficult to say, for it has to do with my state of mind. Sometimes I draw a single line and I "know" that the painting is already there. Other times the struggle is so hard and tenacious that I don´t "see" the painting until it suddenly manifests itself in its finished state. Usually there are distinctive phases in the elaboration of a work: the beginning, (always the most difficult, although in certain bursts of working it tends to become easier) then the phase to model the work from its epicentre, and then there is an alternation between euphoria and dispair, which could make me erase everything and later to recover the erasure; a total disaster... but strangely enough, suddenly, I can "see" the painting appear from the ruins, from the ashes. -Which materials do you prefer to use? My base is acrylic. I was brought up with this material, and I know it. It is strong and it can stand up to my whims. Nevertheless I am challenged by any material on my way: other supports, other pigments, other ways in applying the mass of colour, wax, tar, sandpaper, burlap... To use other materials is not a merit in itself, but to feel them with my hands, to smell them, pushes me in unexpected directions, the very material is the adventure. -When do you regard a work as finished? I suppose a work is finished when I loose my interest is manipulating it, and I even feel the desire to copy it . Often I give loose rein to this desire, admitting that I'm aware that I'll never really be able copy, because right from the first pictorial gesture starts another world, but this gesture does reaffirm definitely the finished state of the previous work. But the really definitive acceptation to consider a work as finished is to expose it to the public.
-To what extend does public opinion or the critics worry you? While I´m working it does not interest me, and I don´t take it into consideration. Once a work is exposed to the public (so finished definitively) I see my work in a different way, almost like a spectator, like others. I let myself be surprised, I see things I haven´t seen before, or at least not conciously, then a comment can comfort me or bother me. But as I am a spectator as well, it doesn´t hurt me... (well, come on..) in my creative state, in the process, in the art. Essentially it is the artist himself who is his first and ultimate critic. That is the solitude. My doubts can't be taken away by whatever praise, but just as well if I "know" a work is good, it will be hard to convince me that it isn't. Yet the dialogue opens my eyes sometimes for some, until then hidden aspects, but I repeat, once the work is exhibited, I am a spectator. After all the art critic is not there, nor should be, to serve the artist, the art critic serves the writing of history.
-Is your work sufficiently spread? It is spread, what is sufficiently? We are not speaking of mass products. A certain interest has been created. An interested person is able to find my studio, an exhibition, an access to internet, and there is also the press. I suppose with the years the work will be spread more, that's the most logical. -Are there any works that you wanted to keep hold of? Starting a new painting is the first step in dismissing the previous one. I can dismiss any painting, I just need te be sure the work is finished, which is, apart from catagorizing it as such, a matter of time. I can dismiss every single one of my works, becouse every single one will be forever my intellectual property, that's why I don't need to have it physically nearby. It is enough to know that a particularly loved work is loved.
-What is your main source of inspiration? The material itself that I work with, the paint mass, the texture itself of the support, is my principal source of inspiration. I have to say though that the word "inspiration" makes me hesitate. I´d rather speak about state of mind, the level of concentration. When I begin to work I try to create the external conditions to concentrate myself: a good breakfast, I prepare coffee, organizing my material, if my last painting had been made whilst listening to music I´ll put on the same music, and yes, smoking a lot... all together a sacred ritual... The obvious sources of inspiration are not easy to evaluate. I don´t know at what point the impact of an image, or images in general, inspires me. Or maybe music, a book I´ve just read, the news, a voyage... It all leaves marks, and influences in this state of ebulliance, almost spiritualistic, which is creating forms and colouring. -Why abstract art and not figurative? Like most painters I started figuratively, I could even go back to it. I don´t rate one higher than the other. After all, the laws of composition rule figuration and abstraction just the same. But the spiritual challange, offered to me by abstraction, pushes me to follow this line. The lack of references to a model makes the evoluation of the work extremely complicated. To me it is enigmatical that an abstract composition can provoke sentiments of sadness, happiness or anger without refering to a situation, whilst in instrumental music this seems so normal to us. Maybe our sence to see is so conditioned to analyze, that it is difficult to jump to a state of seeing just to see... In the process of working at a painting the same happens, it is difficult to avoid the "models" which are there in the studio, in the mind or in the memory. The models want to impose themselves, it requires an extreme concentration to free yourself from them.
-Are there any works that you wanted to keep hold of? Starting a new painting is the first step in dismissing the previous one. I can dismiss any painting, I just need te be sure the work is finished, which is, apart from catagorizing it as such, a matter of time. I can dismiss every single one of my works, becouse every single one will be forever my intellectual property, that's why I don't need to have it physically nearby. It is enough to know that a particularly loved work is loved. -What is your main source of inspiration? The material itself that I work with, the paint mass, the texture itself of the support, is my principal source of inspiration. I have to say though that the word "inspiration" makes me hesitate. I´d rather speak about state of mind, the level of concentration. When I begin to work I try to create the external conditions to concentrate myself: a good breakfast, I prepare coffee, organizing my material, if my last painting had been made whilst listening to music I´ll put on the same music, and yes, smoking a lot... all together a sacred ritual... The obvious sources of inspiration are not easy to evaluate. I don´t know at what point the impact of an image, or images in general, inspires me. Or maybe music, a book I´ve just read, the news, a voyage... It all leaves marks, and influences in this state of ebulliance, almost spiritualistic, which is creating forms and colouring. -Why abstract art and not figurative? Like most painters I started figuratively, I could even go back to it. I don´t rate one higher than the other. After all, the laws of composition rule figuration and abstraction just the same. But the spiritual challange, offered to me by abstraction, pushes me to follow this line. The lack of references to a model makes the evoluation of the work extremely complicated. To me it is enigmatical that an abstract composition can provoke sentiments of sadness, happiness or anger without referring to a situation, whilst in instrumental music this seems so normal to us. Maybe our sense to see is so conditioned to analyze, that it is difficult to jump to a state of seeing just to see... In the process of working at a painting the same happens, it is difficult to avoid the "models" which are there in the studio, in the mind or in the memory. The models want to impose themselves, it requires an extreme concentration to free yourself from them.
-What are your inmediate projects? For next year I´m having two confirmed projects. In April, 2003, I will do a one man show in the "Archgallery" in London, and later, at the end of the same year, I am invited to exhibit in the International Bienale of Contemporany Art in Florence, Italy. About projects in the sense of "creating" I can´t say anything. The changes of direction come to me by surprise, I am not after them. After a while of relative rest I always start with what I was doing before, and then suddenly I make a turn, first out of curiosity, later it seems to be the unique way: I just have to follow it. Yes, I am a bit obsessive.
by Nicolás García Herrera Published in translation by courtesy of Kylix, revista de literatura y arte (Kylix, magazine of literature and art) 2002, Nr. 10
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