When are you going to organize your next exhibition?

When are you going to organize your next exhibition?

Very soon, 
I am thinking about something intimate, at home, in my appartment. It happens that the place has long walls and wonderful city views, and a nude exhibition is still a bit sensitive to perform in a public space of Saigon. Or at least this is my feeling. 
This is going to be my first show in Saigon, and I prefer to do it in this private way. But everybody is wellcome, and I will offer special discount at the day of the exhibition. I hope to sell everything in the event, or even before, why not?
Also I believe that it can be a nice way to obtain some new projects, on demand, as portraits, or landscapes. I am open to that as well.
Here you can see some of the paintings on sell.

How do you like the portraits? I find it has to be quite difficult to catch the true expression

It is difficult, of course. But also so challenging. I love to build the face on shadows and lights. I feel less stress when I paint in a few colors, like Picasso during his blue and pink periods. Also profiles are easier to perform than a full face.

Have you shown your work somewhere?

Yes, of course. Along 20 years of painting I have organized several exhibitions in Mallorca and Barcelona and I have sold most of my work. Since I have discovered the nude as a topic I have focused my attention on it, but I also paint portraits, and I am happy to paint landscapes and still lives on demand. 
Here it is my last exhibition in Barcelona.

  

You talk about watercolors but I see many oil works as well. When did you start with this?

Well, once again Mallorca. When I started living in Palma, I met a group of painters, one of them, Rafael Bestard, has obtained awards and good exhibitions. We used to meet on the Casal Balaguer to do some sketches with live models and after go to grab some dinner at Can Toni, a small bar near Santa Creu church.

That was on 1997, and I was working hard as a doctor in a private clinic in Palma. But I was single, young and full of energy. One night I met a woman that was going to be my model for the next 10 years. Just like that, in a disco. Since then we met from time to time to take pictures and nude painting. 

She was so happy to let me take pictures and paintings, always grateful to stand for hours in front of my camera, sometimes under cold or rain, and at the end she got a big collection of pictures, paintings, watercolors and litographs. Her name was Elena.

 I see you painted many years still lives and landscapes. How did you started with nudes?

It´s a long story. In 1995 I went to spend the summer holidays in Florence, Italy, a city full of history and flavors. I took some Italian and painting of the body lessons at the school Lorenzo de Medicis. 

All the students were young ladies from around the world. I was the only male. So exciting. Painting, parties and love. At that time I was suffering the hardest times on my medical training is Spain. I did not have much interest about the humans as an artist topic. I felt more than fed up in the hospital about human miseries.

That was the reason I painted everything but people. It happened the same with my photographs. No people. Only rotten walls, closed doors, winter gardens, or animals.

But then I met an excellent teacher, Elise, and she changed my mind. She showed to me that my sensibility was hurt and hidden. And she help me to let it show again. 

Also, when I arrived to Spain, I met a cartoon designer and he was so funny guy, and he taught me the fast watercolor sketches. An expressionist and flamenco dancer was our model. I became addicted to her movements, her postures. I did hundreds and thousands of watercolors. 

I enjoyed all the watercolor work from Auguste Rodin, and the expression of Egon Schielle paintings as well. That was a very intense period in my life.

Did Caravaggio paint still lives? I am not aware of it.

He did, and for the first time looking at Barocco artists, I saw a fruit composition with the shadows in it, not outside. I was so sensual, mysterious. 

When I was living in Mallorca, a friend borrowed me a cottage with a precious garden full of orange and lemon trees. I spent there four days and nights painting all that came from that trees, alone, on my own, only with my silences, some music and great Mediterranean food. It was in the Fornalux valley, an extension of orchards with perfumed trees and snake like roads, surrounding the villa of Soller, in the north of the island.

When I returned to Palma, I had in my car one of my best collections of still lives, with all the light of Mallorca. I sold most of them. 

Where did you find your inspiration?

Very close, at home. I loved an old wooden window I found in an abandoned village, in the Catalan Pyrenees. I took it and drove it home. My mother complained a bit, until I started to paint it and she liked my work. I painted it so many times...

Regarding the style, I loved all art books, and as everyone else, I first admired the impressionism period. The colors of Van Gogh, Monet, Gaugin and Cezanne. I loved Cezanne, and I painted lots of fruits, specially peaches and lemons, and afterwards, cabbages and coliflori. 

Later on I discovered the still lives from the Spanish and Italian Barocco painters, like Luis Melendez, Sanchez Cotan. Then I put some dark shadows on the back of the fruits. I stayed on the dark period till I discovered Caravaggio. 

Which was your more difficult work?

I guess it was a view from Sevilla. I wanted to paint the Santa Cruz neighborhood, with all that roof maze, and the white façades. I choose a 2 mt per 1.5 mt canvas. My first and last time. It took me more than a month to paint that image. I prepared the canvas with beach sand, to create the feeling of painting in a wall, like the frescos. But I was wrong. The sand literally ate my brushes, I had to use diluted in turpentine oil paint as if it was watercolor, and the physical effort was tremendous. I was so tired at the end that when I finished the painting I wanted to burn it.

But I had promised the canvas to my father. And when he saw it, he loved it at once. He had very good memories from Sevilla, where he spent time on his military service. And he put it in the main wall in our saloon, in the family house, and it is still there.

When did you start painting?

Oh, it was long time ago, when my mother took me to take some lessons with Manolo Gómez, in Rambla Catalunya Street, in Barcelona. He was a Sevillian painter, fond on the hyperrealism, profound admirer of Antonio López García.

Manolo was slow on walking because had polio on his legs, and also on painting because he wanted to get the touch sensation on the objects he painted, and that used to take long time. He taught me about some colors I had never heard about before, the green gallbladder, the indigo blue, the carmin of garanza or the yellow of Naples . It was a mix of technique and poetry.