Pensamiento

In many of my writings, when I express my feelings and thoughts about art in general or painting in particular, I am talking about love. I use that beautiful word in its full significance; because love is also suffering, desire, work… it is, fundamentally, life itself. Everything is fuelled by love; that is why creation without love is just color without a soul. 

Wandering over the map of Africa, a window is opened into the reality of that wonderful continent. The heart sinks from seeing so much suffering, but the heart sinks out of love; and because of love you suffer with them, and because of love you paint those tragedies, and because of love you get those horrible headaches while painting those living skeletons being lead to nowhere by their mothers. Because of love you frenziedly depict all the horrors which, if they left you unaffected, it would mean that that feeling of love does not exist in you. Sometimes, when confronted with evil, we are tempted to say... that person has no feelings! ... That is wrong! They do have feelings, but not ones of love. 

I want to rid the word love of the vulgarity of department stores, of Saint Valentine’s Day. Love is more that that; more importantly, it is much more serious than chocolates in a red box. When the artist creates from his inner self, he creates out of love; the interior of the artist is love.  

There is a popular saying in Spain that we use to express that something is done expecting nothing in return. Doing something for the fun of it, “por amor al arte”, “for the love of art”. Art must be pure and artists must do everything in their power to maintain that purity; it is a purity that emanates from love and because of love it becomes infinite. 

The artist is the only one who, “for the love of art”, can begin to fight against everything that is rotten in today’s art world, so that the love of art becomes stronger than the market mentality that dominates the world nowadays. The art world is now in the hands of no more than tradesmen who make art their business but have no love for it. Even good artists have been contaminated by these peddlers whose only stimulus is financial reward. Luckily, there are still those who paint and deal in art “for the love of art”.