Ofrenda Painting

José A. Buxadó, “Ofrenda”, 32.0 x 45.4 cm, oil on canvas, 2021, Owner: The Honorable Jorge Berlanga, La Habana, Cuba. I created my painting “Ofrenda” as a landscape with symbolic representations of the Cuban spirituality with deep roots in the African culture. Keeping this universe in mind, without forgetting that I was born in a country with more than 400 religions, creeds, fraternities, brotherhoods, and sects in holly peace, I built an elliptic composition around a pond ahead of a ridge of hillocks. I chosen this unusual geometry as the introduction to a deeper message that cannot be understood from a linear symbolic representation, because it is highly complex. I faced the painting of the scene with a strong feeling of wonderful unreality as a formidable challenge. I preferred not to indicate planes of this painting by linear perspective, interplay of dark and light, nor colors, but by the meaning of symbols, its position in the painted place, and the elliptic trajectory. The foremost image is that of a tree known as “Ceiba” with a central role in African religions. The tree breathes vitality to show the current good health of the African religions in Cuba. The offering of tropical fruits, deposited for adoration of ancestral spirits and deities at the foot of the tree, set the first plane in this composition. The remaining five planes hide additional meanings that invite to know more on the influence of African religions in the Cuban culture for building an individual perception of its transcendence and strength in this singular island. Maybe, the context could not be so obvious at first sight. The very tall red entity without shadow will certainly give rise to many questions, hypotheses, and discussions, if he were not decoded. This is an African spirit invoked at the painted place, coming from the fourth plane, and suggesting the arrival of more entities from the ridge of hillocks, and the pond, during a sunset. My heartfelt respect to the Cuban spirituality was the core of my intuitive selection of symbolic representations without adding more compositional elements than those unavoidable necessary to represent a dimension of the reality coming from unexplained human perceptions. Among other things, the painting “Ofrenda” represents the intensity of the spiritual world in my country. The very tall red entity not only contemplates the offering and the tree, but his dynamic silhouette, in the painted place, confirms that something is happening into this landscape. As a landscape of spirituality, I made this painting to ask for deeper understanding of the Cuban soul.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:17.9 W x 12.6 H x 0 D in

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