Portraits

It begins with the music. The first few gentle notes of a sonata drift through the studio as Javier Cabada stands before a large, empty canvas. This white void serves not to intimidate him but to provide an expansive playground for the possibilities of his imagination. With a decisive first few brush strokes, Cabada quickly breaks up the empty space by loosely mapping out the major landmarks of the face. Once this has been accomplished, he immediately dives into color using broad, sweeping applications of thick paint with the palette knife. He continues to sculpt the planes of the face with a series of long, jagged brush strokes that twist and turn with a bold spontaneity. Beethoven emerges.