45) Nature Flesh

Painting. Nature Flesh. 2009

Acrylic paint and mediums.

After i was done with "Modernizing Porongo," we had a special guest who was going to teach us all about acrylic paint and mediums, how they work and what we can use them for. I already had a background on acrylic mediums and had already experimented with them the previous year, but i realized that what i knew before was nothing compared to what i was learning at the moment.

Nature Flesh was the successor of Modernizing Porongo, maintaining the same concept but at the same time, integrating what i had learnt.

Nature Flesh is an installation that i created using several separate pieces made of fabric, paint and pouring medium.

For my installation i used a new and one of my favorite painting techniques that i learnt. On a glossy surface such as glass or plastic, i would pour lots of pouring medium, creating with a palette knife the shape that i wanted, and i would add a bit of acrylic paint on the medium, pigmenting it. (I added several colors for different finishes in each piece) Once the medium was dry, which usually lasted about 12 hours or a day sometimes, i would slowly remove it from the surface and i would get an awesome, almost translucent piece of what was really just paint. In many of these pieces i added the fabric that i used in my previous installation for better texture.

My installation is called nature flesh because each piece reminds me so much of the meat markets in Peru., in the way they hang the meat for exhibition, the natural colors and the organic shapes and textures they possess.

I hang my pieces in a tree at a park next to my house and left it there for about a day to create public reaction. It wad so much fun walking around the place looking at people's reaction to my work.

I want to thank my little brother for helping me set the installation up. I love you.

44) Modernizing Porongo

Painting. Modernizing Porongo. 2009

Mixed media.

I found the proposal essay i wrote about this piece somewhere in my hard disk, and i will just show it to you because it's the best way to describe this piece and the reasons i had to make it.

"The title of my project is Modernizing Porongo, El Porongo is a Peruvian company that started creating contemporary handmade decorative works using Peruvian techniques, materials and styles during the 1980’s. Modernizing Porongo is therefore a way of representing the Peruvian art that many people within the country have been practicing since the early pre-colonial years with a slightly different interpretation. I chose to create this piece based on Polly Apfelbaum’s fallen Paintings because of the similarities it has with the Peruvian modern art and the concept of “feminism”.

El Porongo creates art for the sake of decoration; it reveals, like Polly’s fallen paintings, the capacity to redefine “women’s work.” Apfelbaum believes that to be feminine one must push the boundaries of one’s position but balancing both the playful and the serious, and the way I intend to do that is by pushing past the traditional disciplinary forms of Peruvian art into pop culture, giving it a more modern-western touch but maintaining its own techniques and materials.

My piece will be a horizontal flat on floor piece just like Apfelbaum’s Fallen Paintings, and it will be more of an installation rather than a one piece painting. I will use different materials other than just canvas and I want to use a long, maybe 15ft x 15ft fabric, velvet if possible. The piece will not be like Polly’s pieces, it will reflect her minimalistic and modern ideas, but it will create a different reaction on the viewer due to the strong change of colors, materials and style. I think that by making this piece I could definitely open new modern ideas to my culture and hopefully enhance Polly’s feminine concept on contemporary Art."

The images and drawing i added to the piece are all related to peruvian culture, for instance this monkey figure comes from the "Nazca Lines" in Peru.

When i presented this piece, it was flat on the floor so that viewers could interact with it, (I still want to make it bigger, and create a much bigger installation so people would really have to walk through it to see everything) but in the picture i am showing here, the piece in on the wall because i didn't want to ruin it after i took it home, so i had to hung it and make sure it would stay intact.

37) Bar

Bar. Summer 2009.

Mixed media on wood.

While i was still taking classes in IDEAS, i was working on my own project called "Bar".

A friend of my mom's had seen my work and she told me to make a big painting for the Bar/dining room.

It was the first time i had a real client and the first time i was really gonna get paid for my work.

I had no more information other than she wanted it for the Bar and she wanted it to be pretty modern, so this is what i came up with.

I chose to create the painting in different pieces of wood (Just like my "commodity of art" piece, only that i was using wood instead of canvas, because that was what i was learning at the moment and i wanted to get better at it).

I was going to make a big piece with lots of texture and 3d objects, so the first thing i had to work on was my textures and my reliefs before adding any color to the piece.

I love working with 3D objects because it is out of the ordinary and because it makes the piece interact more with the viewer. Since the piece was meant for a bar/dining room, i decided to use objects that would represent these places such as a bottle, corks, glasses and images of fruits. The bottle was the most challenging thing i had to do in this piece because it was the first time i was trying something so different and complicated. I cut the bottle in a way that i could place it on the surface facing upwards and so that it would be very noticeable but still not too heavy that it would make it harder to stay.

I tried to incorporate as many of the textures that i was learning as possible, and while doing do, i also ended up creating some of my one like my representation of wine. I wanted to make the liquid falling and flowing as exaggerated as possible so that it would create an impact in the entire piece. I pasted lots of crumpled paper towel on the wood (using a lot of glue so that it wouldn't come out), and that gave the surface a lot of relief, but in order to make it even more noticeable, i added molding paste on top, creating the wavy shapes with my pallet knife. Once the textures was finished i painted it all with a champagne acrylic color, followed by darker oil colors to create the shadows.

Here are a couple of close ups:

36) texturized picture frames!

Ideas. Texturized picture frames. Summer 2009

Mixed media on wood.

Once i had learnt lots of new techniques, i was trying to create things that were both useful (picture frame) and beautiful for an interior. This first one i made while i was in IDEAS with the help of my teacher, and while doing it i learnt some other few techniques with cardboard, molds and sand. The technique with sand was one of my favorite once because of the beautiful and natural texture it gives. For all of these pieces i used acrylics and oil paint (each of them with their specific mediums).

I learnt also how to paint wood textures with acrylics, oils and different brush sizes. I painted this wood texture at the back of my first picture frame.

The second and third picture frames were made at home during my free time. I loved the first one so much that i wanted to do as many as i could so it would help me practice and also so i would have beautiful things to sell (because all of my aunts loved the first one so much they all wanted one for their house lol)

Ever since i went back to Vancouver to after the summer i had been wanting to continue doing these kind of things that i learnt during summer, but i couldn't find the wood i was always using in Peru which meant that i had to create my own picture frame first, and i couldn't seem to find time to get the correct material and to get myself to do it, but one day i'll do more of those :)

35) Texture techniques

I stopped going to the painting classes in the institute of Peruano - Japones because it was way too far from my house and i had to go every other day without a car, so i started checking for other places near my house and i found IDEAS.

IDEAS is a contemporary store where you can get materials, paintings, and all sorts of things for interiors that had been beautifully decorated, such as cup holders, picture frames, trays, cups, plant pots, etc. And apart from that, they offered different kinds of classes to be able to decorate our interiors using techniques that i had never seen before.

I took classes twice a week for almost 2 months.

Texture techniques. Ideas. Summer 2009.

Mixed media on board.

I made this piece thinking of it as a practice board because all i did was use an empty space on the board to learn a new technique. The teacher would teach me a technique and i would apply it to my board without even thinking that it could end up being a nice piece of art.

I learnt crazy ways of creating different textures like using crumpled plastic bags (to create the texture in the yellow background), or sponge molds to crate image stamps with molding paste (the gray image in the center), using a special rubber comb to create the gray wavy texture with molding paste at the left, or even using bleach to create those random round dots painted in red.

Also, i learnt how to use oil paint properly. My entire life, ever since i started painting, i was always using acrylics and for once i tried oil paint and the effect that the oil paint gives in wood surfaces is much nicer than acrylics i think, specially since it lasts longer for it to dry, there's more opportunities to create more textures and transparencies.

That metal looking effect that i gave to the stamp in the middle and to the wave image was very simple. first i painted the entire surface with black acrylics and once the paint was dry, i put a layer of silver acrylic paint on top. A very important thing to have with you when making this decorations is a piece of cloth. Right after i put the silver layer on my surface i would gently wipe off the paint from the relief of the stamp so that the background would be darker, making the stamp stand out even more.

Im not sure if i explained that very well but the point is that it create a lovely effect if you ever want something to look like metal.

34) Textures

Textures. Peruano - Japones. Summer 2009

Mixed media on wood.

I started using different materials such as rope and styrofoam and learnt new techniques to create nice textures with crumpled paper.

This is not exactly one of my favorite pieces, in fact i think i gave it away because i did not like it, but i want to put it here because it was sort of useful and i did learn some new things.

33) Picture Frame (From Canada to Peru)

After my first year in Vancouver, i went back to Peru to spend time with my family during summer, but since i pretty much do nothing other than relaxing when i'm there, i decided to take some painting courses just for the sake of learning and doing what i like most.

I realized that paintings in Peru are usually different that those in North America, not only because of the style they use but also because of the different materials that are available. I personally LOVE peruvian artists, i don't exactly know of anyone in particular, but simply

walking in the streets and seeing the amazing things people come up with is just unbelievable. It always makes me think how, having so much talent, opening a small store is as far as they can get, while many others without that talent are much better off. I find it very unfair sometimes, but i guess that's how life works.

I wanted to learn the techniques these artists in Peru use so bad that i signed up to a painting course in the institute "Peruano-Japones" in June 2009.

Picture Frame. Peruano - Japones. Summer 2009

Acrylics on wood.

We learnt how to create nice textures on wood using a sponge, molding paste, hard fabric and styrofoam. For example, I created the little leafs using molding paste and a palette knife and added some basic texture on the surface of the frame using the molding paste and the sponge. It's amazing how simple creative things can end up looking pretty good.

Every part of this picture frame has texture, either with the fabric or with the molding paste, but there's no single smooth area other than the center which is where the picture goes.

30) Commodity of Art

Painting. Commodity of Art.2009

Acrylic, acrylic mediums and other on canvas.

My final piece for the course was about the commodity of art. We were supposed to create a contemporary piece representing an issue about contemporary art, using the mediums and the new techniques we learnt in the course.

I chose to create a piece that would represent what i thought of most contemporary art at the moment, how, nowadays, artists make art not just for the sake of art making and expressing ideas and emotion but more for the money they would make out of it.

This first picture was a rough draft of what my final piece was gonna look like. I decided to depict my idea by adding bills, coins, information about art commodity and money symbols into it. I always liked addict objects and texturized mediums to my pieces because they give my painting a rough looking finish.

The fact that my piece was pretty abstract already tell that it is a modern piece, but in order to make it look even more contemporary, i decided to use different sized canvases and put them all together as a single piece. The overall size was pretty big, i forgot what exactly but probably about 1.2 x 1.2 meters.

This piece has lots of small details that you can only really notice looking at it in person, but these are some parts that were zoomed in. As you can see, i added coins and pieces of paper that were half folded so the viewer could have some interaction with the piece, because i like my art not only to be looked at but also to be touched.

I brought my painting in pieces all the way to Peru, i framed it and hung it in my parent's living room. ;)

29) Family Portrait

Family portrait. Acrylic mediums and image transfers. 2009

Acrylic, acrylic mediums and ink on board.

By this point, we were learning all about acrylic mediums, their properties and how we can use them to make our paintings look better.

"Acrylic medium is basically the same as acrylic paint without the pigment. We can use it as paint additive, an adhesive, and a texturizer, and it can also be used to create image transfers. It comes in three basic weights (medium, gel, and paste) and two finishes (matter and gloss)."

I loved the idea of the image transfers and i started testing it on my own during my free time. There are several ways of transferring an image using acrylic medium, and after trying several of them i found that the one i feel more comfortable with was using the matte medium.

Basically what i had to do was print the image that i wanted to transfer in a normal paper and using a brush, i added the matte medium on the top of the picture, waited for it to dry and added another layer. I did this process about 3 times until there was enough medium on the picture. After i was sure that the medium was all dry, i put the picture in water for a couple of minutes so that the paper would get soft and be easy to remove. Right after taking the picture off the water, i started removing the paper from the back by gently rubbing my fingers on the surface in circular motion. What it does is that the ink gets stuck in the medium, so that when i removed the paper from the back i had a piece of transparent medium with the portrait of my family, which i afterwards pasted on the canvas. This is very useful because not only it looks more artistic, but also we can paint and add colors to the image ourselves without worrying that it might tear or that it might loose its color.

When i started working on this piece, i had no idea that it was going to turn out to be something nice that i would once hang on my wall because the reason why i did it was just for practice and experimenting. I really wanted to try the image transfer and i had also recently bought lots of textured mediums that i wanted to try and see what they were used for. So while i was simply experimenting i realized that what i had done was pretty cool, so i took it with me to Peru, framed it, and now its hangs on my parent's house wall. (I love it)

The writing at the top is a lovely poem for my family that i found at the time and i just loved it, so even thought it's written horizontally, and many people might get neck problems trying to read it, the meaning is still there and i think it look more artistic and creative.

11) Tricia Courtney's monochromatic

Fall. 2007
Acrylic on board. Palette knives.

I was inspired by Tricia Courtney's paintings of trees. The method she uses to paint with palette knives, which gives the painting a lot of texture, caught my attention a lot and so i decided to try something similar.
At that point in my life i just wanted to try as many things as i could, experiment with different surfaces, media, and method of applying it. This time i wanted to try painting with pallet knives, something i was completely new at.
I chose to make my painting monochromatic because i wanted to concentrate not on the color of the image but on its texture.