Speculum Print

Raúl Lara Naranjo (Morón de la Frontera, Seville, Spain, (1980). Like every child, Raúl showed determination in his first scribbles and soon his parents observed how he spent hours in front of hundreds of papers that he painted and painted, doing everything kind of drawings. That motivated him to be enrolled in painting classes at an academy at the age of 9 so that he could learn about the fundamentals of pictorial art. Thanks to these classes, he began in the oil technique and began to make his first paintings for family and friends, always in small formats. From that moment his training has been self-taught, guided by inspiration, by the hours and hours in front of countless canvases, by the readings he has done, by videos, online information ... Almost all his knowledge about painting has been the result of his interest, his passion, his curiosity and desire to learn, and above all, his innate quality for painting. Now in his maturity, not only vital but pictorial, he manages to capture in his painting all that learning, which continues to develop day by day, In the beginning, his painting was always classic and realistic: seascapes, still lifes, Andalusian patios ... Little by little, always self-taught and inspired by contemporary artists, he began to explore more modern techniques, alternating various media such as oils, acrylics, pastels or various inks up to the transfer of images, with which he achieves that characteristic result that gives his work that unique appearance. greater expressiveness to the paintings and alternating various mediums such as oils, acrylics, pastels or various inks. Artist statement My recent work explores the two parts that we all have, the "I" that we show and the interior, the one that only we fully know, the hidden one. Mark Twain said that every man is a moon with a hidden face that never shows anyone. I represent this on the canvas first whistling in a more or less classic way, using oils and acrylics, this would be the face we show. Once finished and properly dried, I transfer the image used as a painting motif onto the canvas, resulting in a black and white image. This creates a work that navigates between color and black and white, the thin and smooth layer of paint versus the textured and broken caused by the transfer of the image and the mediums used for the same.