Notes on the Artist and the Artwork

FERNANDO LLOSA - The Conventional Bio Sheet

I was born 61 years ago in Arequipa, Peru, to parents who had, among other peculiarities, a taste for original art on their walls and extended dialogue at the dinner table.

Right after high school and at the tender age of 16, I was shipped off to pursue university studies in the United States with a full scholarship granted by Loyola University in Chicago. Having earned a BA in Sociology with minors in Philosophy and Theology, I next traveled to Paris where I studied French for a few months before moving on to do post-graduate work in Communications at the University of Louvain, this time with a scholarship granted by the Belgian government.

In 1969 I returned to South America married to an American I had met in Louvain. During the next 20 years I helped her raise three kids, and worked in the design and implementation of projects for the social and economic development of very poor urban and rural communities. Despite my family obligations and an extremely heavy workload, during this time I also managed to formally exhibit photography, drawing or painting at least once every year.

Towards the end of this period we were living in Montevideo, Uruguay, and I was working for an international organization implementing projects in fifteen different countries.The geopolitics affecting Latin America had changed drastically during the decade of the 80's, and a terrible wave of right wing repression was gradually making impossible the type of human rights and social and economic development work I was doing. Field workers in whose training I had participated and whose salaries I had helped fund, were being brutally persecuted and sometimes tortured and killed.

Simultaneously, and in no small measure due to the unrelenting pressures of my job and the constant travel it required, my marriage and my health started to fall apart. Finally, in 1990, I quit my job and migrated to the U.S taking permanent residence in Ithaca, New York, after two years of personal reconstruction spent in New York City and the Catskills. I have spent the last 15 years in this area writing and making and exhibiting art, most of them in company of Kim Schrag with whom I share a lot more than an interest in art. The Oxford Gallery and the Peter Jung Fine Art Gallery in Rochester and Hudson, New York respectively, represent my painting. Belle Melange represents my work with stone in Ithaca, New York.

FERNANDO LLOSA - The Real Scoop

I am you with a different name and a superficially different story, and I begin to relate with you by rejecting the distance that an overly tight identification with subjective biographical recollections would impose on our potential friendship.

In other words, I question the cultural and psychological separation that an exaggerated sense of separate identity would create between us. Instead of emphasizing the superficialities that would make each one of us feel unique, and therefore, separate, I would like to draw our attention to the immensely more important similarities that makes us, not just alike, but one and the same.

Our bodies seem quite the same, and we both share with everyone else the same existential dependency on the Earth's biosphere and its cosmic matrix. We can expect to live exactly the same biological life cycle including an equally unavoidable death. We share language and, most of all, we share the entire experience of the species recorded deep in our brains.
Strangely enough, part of this universal mental conditioning seems to negate and obscure all the common factors I just mentioned, while giving enormous importance to the tribal (cultural) and psychological (biographical) differences from which we the traditionally overwrought sense of personal identity emerges.

If you read my little personal story above, chances are that you now have a clear sense of what makes us different. And this sense of difference has probably determined as well a mechanical reaction of like or dislike. But if you and I were talking with one another face to face, I am quite sure that after a while we would find out that we both have ambitions, fears and hatreds; as we have pleasures and joys. We would also realize that we both have suffered hurt and inflicted hurt on others; that we equally fear accidents, losses and failures, as well as the ravages of old age, and death as a common destiny.

If honest and earnest enough, we would also discover that no faith, hope, therapeutic method, or degree of success can ever deliver us from the facts and consequences of our shared humanity. Then, the slightly different stories and seemingly different attributes of two different individuals would dissolve in the warm embrace of two human beings who have somehow discovered they are fundamentally one and the same, not just with each other, but with life as a whole.

Essential to this coming together on which the very survival of humanity depends, is a joint perception of the truth about the human condition. And this perception cannot take place without a prior realization that all particular forms of ambition, faith and hope are mere cultural constructs that provide a false sense of separate importance and a measure of consolation. They also make one blind. Consequently, the ability to see with clarity implies a radical independence from the false warmth of tribally or personally issued security blankets.

Freedom from self-deception and cultural brainwashing is then an enlightened hopelessness, a once and for all rejection of past, present and future cultural and personal initiatives presenting themselves as capable of gradually effecting social progress and personal development. There is no moving away from the fact that the tragedy of humanity is what it is because each one of us is who we are: separate and forever seeking to gain superior status in this life or in an imaginary next.

Only the possibility of a mutation of the human brain/mind through an insight unrelated to particular knowledge and desire is of interest. All the writing and all the art you can see in this site attempts in some way or another, to help us explore this possibility.

NOTES ON THE ARTWORK

Let me first give you some idea of the process that leads to these prints.

First, a rough sketch of the human form or a landscape is made by painting with water on 6 x 8” or 8 x 10” glass plate. Then, this hardly visible and very basic form is tinted with highly and differentially diluted acrylic pigment or sumi ink.

Subsequently, a heat gun (an industrial strength hair dryer) is used to raise the temperature of this mixture and to gently push it around. Brushes and other tools are also utilized throughout the process.

This manner of painting creates a very thin emulsion of paint that is, to a great extent, the actual record of tinted fluids rolling across the flat, nonabsorbent surface of the glass.

The plates that survive inspection are cleaned, protected with an acrylic fixative (the painted surface is extremely fragile) and then either used as large format negatives to create silver gelatin photographic (black and white) enlargements, (or 1 to 1 contact prints made by exposing photographic paper placed directly under the glass plate serving as negative); or, most commonly, they are scanned at a very high resolution, further processed in the computer and then printed, either as color photographs or as inkjet prints.(The ink emulsion in is read as rich and varied chocolaty, sepia or golden tones in the scanning process).

At an entry level, the very fundamental nature of the the elements and processes from which these rather complex images emerge is intended to draw attention to the fundamental physical and psychological similarity of all human beings. There is no form in the inherent transparency of water—no-thing—and there is no form in ink—total darkness, no-thing as well. Form emerges as wind and heat animate unthinkable steps in a flowing dance of nothing with nothing.

To become aware of the fundamental commonality of all human beings, challenges our irrational proclivity to exaggerate beyond all measure the presumed uniqueness and pedigree of our particular identities. It helps us take a skeptical look at the overwrought value we each attribute to our relatively different experience, knowledge and belief, and to the exclusive values and ambitions that particular personal and cultural experience project onto the future.

At a deeper level, this vein of work intends to align our vision with that of mystics who, throughout the ages, have reported that beyond the obvious limitations of our perceptive and cognitive capacity and beneath the superficial differences of our separate, claustrophobiac, and inherently antagonistic psychological and tribal identities, there is a formless and therefore indivisible—yet infinitely lively and creative—ground of all being in which mental suffering as a result of conflicted and conflictive separation, cannot possibly exist.

…And how exactly are these things made, people ask me?

Close observation of everything is the key to the creation of these wall sculptures or stone poems, as I prefer to call them. Both, close observation of natural forms in frequent and long visits to the wild; and close observation of the nature and quality of current interpersonal and social interactions, as well as of the life/death cycle common to us all. Long walks and bike rides through what little remains of the wild in the Finger Lakes region of New York, where I live, yield most of the elements you see in these pieces; others are generously provided by a few friends who share this concern about the destruction of the natural environment and the parallel degradation of our interior and social life.

Altogether, I'd like these pieces—as well as anything else I make, do, or say—to pose a question that cannot be conceptually, verbally, answered: —Is there a mode of human existence not based on the psychologically isolated, culturally conditioned and, therefore, also conflicted and suffering self?

If you are interested in how these pieces are made, here's the technical scoop: Elements are gathered without concern for or prior conception regarding their eventual assemblage. Once in the studio, and somewhere in my recording and affective mind, I play with them till they come together through rather mysterious affinities that I'd be foolish to attempt naming and categorizing. I really don't know what to do with the elements I gather, and so I let them tell me as I shuffle them around my worktable.

Once a final design has established itself, I cut to the appropriate dimensions and glue together three or four layers of acid-free mat board and foamcore on which I then carefully rearrange all the pieces constituting the design. The next step is to draw the outline of the elements that will be embedded and carve the board along the outline with a straight edge knife, keeping in mind the space that will be needed to fold the specific type of fabric chosen for that piece around the edges of the cut so that the stones or other elements may latter find a snug inlaid fit. The depth of the cut made into the sandwiched boards determines the depth at which any particular component needs to be embedded.

And if I want to have other components superimposed on those that will be inlaid at different depths, I glue onto them small pieces of fabric or foam core with the adequate thickness and then position them over the, by then, fabric-lined carved surface into which the other elements have already been embedded.

Raw silk and linen are the best fabric material I've found to work with. Why this? -Simply because they're better behaved than all others when it comes to lining them with paper. Yes, most of the fabrics used to cover these cut boards and to line the frames they go into, must receive a tissue paper skin; otherwise glue will go right through when folding it over the edges and ruin the surface. The glue I use for most purposes is PVA, Poly Vinyl Acetate. Occasionally, I use thicker bodied resin glue to bind very heavy stones.

The Paintings

Of all the questions that may be asked about these paintings those about technique may not be the most pertinent. It's much more interesting and revealing to begin by inquiring about the concerns from which they emerge, the reasons why they are made at all.

A primary source for this form of art is the realization that human sensory perception is extremely limited as is—consequently—the cognitive cultural edifice (knowledge, tradition and faith) built on the basis of our previous experience and extending onto to a future projected by that limited experience.

In other words, our sense of reality has very little to do with reality itself. What we perceive and think of ourselves, the world, and our presence in it is, at best, an extremely reductive and biased mental construct; at worst, outright falsehood and self-deception.

Our incapacity to rid humanity of its chronic sources of suffering, (such as war, injustice, and poverty), and our personal selves of myriad psychological miseries, is rather obvious proof that there is something fundamentally wrong with our perception, the cognition that is based on it, and the actions engendered by both. Further inquiry into this matter reveals that our very ability to perceive and to think creates a self-centered split within our individualized psyches, as well as a permanent sense of separation from others and from the world at large.

Within the psyche, there is a division between "me" and the set of negative or positive attributes perceived as "myself". Extra psychologically, in relationship, there are further divisions between "me" and "you"; between "me" and "not-me". These dualities enable us to attain, defend, and maintain a continuous sense of personal identity, but they do so at enormous personal and social cost.

The broken up and alienated personal psyche is conditioned by previous experience (memory) as well as by the projections that emerge from this experience seeking self-fulfillment. In other words, personal experience and desire inform perception, thought, and the projections in time that thought compulsively generates.

As it were not bad enough that the human psyche (and the physical brain itself) are uniformly conditioned by the tragic experience of the species and thus generally operate in deeply dysfunctional ways, different individuals and different groups have been further programmed by particular cultural and personal experiences determining different identities and opposed "manifest destinies".

This cultural fragmentation and psychological alienation makes confusion and conflict a permanent attribute of our existence. Our world—the social and the material world we perceive and permanently recreate with our perceptions, thoughts and actions—is then a deeply atomized and violent world, a world in which joy and peace are the exception rather than the rule.

Given my interest in these matters, it only natural that I would approach painting, and art making in general, with a diminished interest in the contents of my own (admittedly conditioned) psyche, and a consequently enhanced curiosity about the possibility of radical psychological and cultural deprogramming.

All that interests me is the possibility of an unprecedented mode of human existence characterized by an unconditioned mind inseparable from a world deeply interconnected and animated by an intelligence whose light we are obviously blind to now.

In the act of painting this interest in taking myself literally—and as far as I can— out of the picture, predisposes me to trust what the materials will do as they "naturally" enter the infinite possibilities of random accident.

What you see in many of the paintings is a very pure record of what actually happened in the process of painting. That is, the image does not represent anything. It is fundamentally the actual record of the rather unpredictable movement of pigment and medium flowing over a white surface, propelled by the diverse tools and methods that I have stumbled upon in over 25 years of painting in this manner. In these particular paintings, my role has been reduced to merely calibrating some of the intervening variables in the rather mechanical process of pushing paint around.

My selective intervention affects the level of randomness without ever eliminating it. In other words, great attention is given to the physical properties of the materials, the tools used, and the viability of the flow they facilitate, while simultaneously having no concern whatsoever regarding the ultimate form of the painting shape or aesthetic value of specific forms being generated by the painting process .

To complicate matters further, in other paintings—after this basic process has been carried out—I allow myself to bring out with brushes and other traditional tools the mental forms that I may project onto the primary painting.

Why do this? Well, remember that I am particularly interested in the problem of a psyche conditioned by previous experience and therefore stuck with its own petty contents, its own habits and limitations.

These two types of approaches to the painting allow me to see—and to reveal to those who would care to see—the contrast between different degrees of my presence in the process.

Painting thus becomes a tool in the much more general task of knowing myself, of seeing from moment to moment how the structure and the additive contents of the psyche condition perception—not just of the images created in this manner—but of every aspect and every instant of my life.

Because this is useful to me, I offer you these paintings so that you may do the same and perhaps catch a glimpse of how your mind is put together and how it operates.

Here is how.

Take some time and allow yourself to focus your attention, not just on the image in front of you, but also on how you're looking at it and how you're reacting to the experience of seeing it.

If you are attentive you will immediately notice that your mind is not passively taking in the image, but rather projecting onto it its own preconceptions.

Observe how intense is the need to determine what the painting represents, what it reminds you of, and whether you like it or not. You may also find yourself trying to determine the technique employed to produce it, how it was made. This are all clear signs that you aren't really seeing the painting, but rather the contents of your own mind.

See how mechanical these reactions are and how they are grounded in previous experience and future expectations.

If you can, compare what you see, think and feel about a particular image, with what another person, sees, thinks and feels. There is more than a good chance that, because of your particular backgrounds and projections you have created two remarkably different paintings, rather unrelated to the real one.

The actual painting is really nothing more than the random marks left by pigment traveling mindlessly across the surface of the board. Marks sometimes altered by the artist's own projections, sometimes not.

Now, let's put the paintings aside. They are not in themselves important.

If you have an insight into the way in which your memories and your desires impose themselves—not just on these images—but on everything and everybody you come in contact with, then you automatically have a greater understanding of why there is so much conflict and violence in the world, and why we feel so alienated from others as well as from the larger material and social world.

As I have, you may also come away from this experience with a greater interest in the possibility that one may be somehow free from the unnecessary distortions and incorrect actions created by a psyche which tends not to operate on the basis of the actual facts presented by every moment of life, but rather on the self-serving memories and desires conditioning—and therefore dulling and biasing —its capacity to perceive, reason, and act.

We are left then with a few essential questions vitalizing our brains and questioning our habitual ways:

—Can the powerful impulse we all have to assert and project ourselves come to an end?

—Can the artificial distance between "me" and "not-me" that each one of us creates and recreates at every moment in order to preserve a rather questionable sense of discrete existence and inflated self regard, dissolve?

—Is our illusory psychological presence and its predatory projections onto the imagined future what is blocking the manifestation of an undivided, timelessly flowing world?

—Is there a world not reducible to the categories of the human mind and not accessible to its misguided desire to posses and control it?

If after all this you are still interested in the technical particulars of how these paintings were made, here they are:

The oil paintings were created by mixing and dragging pigments and linseed oil under another surface or by pushing or dragging the flowing mixture with a variety of spatulas and knifes.

Every perceivable line is a stop in a rather slow process requiring a steady pulse; good, slow breathing; and sensitivity to surface tension to avoid ugly smears and scratches caused by drag.

The preparation of a very smooth working surface is also of importance. Several coats of sizing and gesso must be applied and finely sanded. Very few of these paintings have subsequent manipulation using other tools and means.

The acrylic paintings, on the other hand, incorporate a greater number of techniques because the use of water as medium makes the process more malleable, more responsive, and faster, (also less predictable).

Aside from the drag and pull technique described above, many of these paintings were created by pushing the flowing mixture of pigment and water with a heat gun.

Hot, blowing air makes the molecules of acrylic and water behave and relate in very peculiar and interesting ways revealing to a very limited extent, to be sure, the presence of the immense creativeness inherent in matter and whatever intelligence may lie behind its order and endless creativity.

The surface created by diluted acrylic is also more receptive than that of oils to posterior manipulation with brushes, pencils, and dry points.

If you'd like further details please feel free to get in touch: here