"Say hello, wave goodbye" Painting

Although I was born in Córdoba (Spain) in 1966, I have lived in Madrid for most of my life. It was in this city that I studied sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts. I have always painted, but until recently I had not felt the need to share what I did with other people. My opening to the outside world has coincided with my move to a small town in Alicante, in the Mediterranean coast, and to a radical transformation in the way I paint, inspired by the three artists that have most inspired me: Basquiat, Chagall and Dubuffet. I am interested not only in the work by the latter, but also by his ideas on Art Brut, in which I fit not only due to my deliberate move away from academic art, but also because I suffer from a serious mental illness which is in some ways reflected in the recurrent subjects of my works and in the way I paint. Like Picasso, I have always believed that all children are essentially artists and that it is formal education that makes them loose their fresh approach to art. Because of this, I aim to come as close as possible to their way of painting. This process has made me move away from a style that was little refined but which aimed for precision and adopt one where images are created in few brushstrokes and with a clear tendency towards caricature. Of my first works there remain only photographs and a few paintings which I gave away to people, because I destroyed all I had previously produced during a nervous crisis. In the same measure that I have gradually given up academic impositions, I have felt freer to experiment with diverse techniques I discovered in other painters or that I myself invented. The subjects that appear in my pictures are usually interpretations of scenes from my life or that I observe on television, newspapers or other media. They are also born from details from reality which my view distorts, suggesting images or scenes which I later fix in my works. The vivid colors and grotesque characters that make up my paintings contrast to the sadness that usually inspires me and which frequently leads me to incorporate weeping figures. When I paint, I try not to think about the impression they will cause upon the spectator as I feel it would condition my work. I have never felt identified with a particular generation or artistic movement, which does not mean that I ignore the connections that exist between my way of painting and outsider art and Neo-expressionism.