Maíllo

Painting leads to thinking.

I see painting as a catalyst of thought. In combination with drawing, it helps to establish conceptual maps and charts. Painting brings order to the various political, social and cultural shifts which we often witness as powerless observers. Painting makes them legible and brings our attention back to the epicentre of events.

I like to think that, in my work, ideas interact and infect each other, dynamically facilitating encounters and confrontations. Those encounters, in turn, lead me to reflect on all the stimuli we receive, which sometimes are so brief and fleeting that we hardly notice them. My experience before the canvas, my own gesturality, the sign created by each stroke helps me to identify those stimuli and quantify their potential impact on us.

It’s paradoxical that painting, an age-old discipline inextricably linked to the material and tangible, is what’s given me the ability to shatter the dichotomy of high versus low culture, face the absence of great narratives and make the human voice heard over the machinal cacophony of the present. In this way, painting creates a space where the aim is no longer to communicate something but rather to convey the hospitality and warmth of the home. Within that warmth, I try to assemble and unite scattered elements to produce something as traditional and meaningful as a painting.