Why paint? Because the act of painting exists in the present, because by seeing and painting I adjust my own reality and the present becomes livelier.
Art, in my case painting, transports us to a new world, to unprecedented experiences, whether the work is abstract or figurative. In this painting I tell multiple stories, and all these stories coexist in the same reality: the cowboy (adventurous, lonesome and free) and the dog (a Labrador, faithful friend).
Whilst I was painting, I read “The Famished Road” by Ben Okri, (generically a book that talks about post-colonialism, centered around Yoruba culture). During this reading I was living, and still am, this pandemic time, which became my backdrop while painting this work. And on my canvas everything happens simultaneously, just like in life, in the complexity of the various levels that overlap and intersect. Books, characters, painters and painting, all intermediaries and generators of metaphors for life. So many different stories that coexist without any cancelling out the other in its dimensions or emotions.