“When I go into a piece of work, I don’t worry about what it’s going to look like.
Because whatever I end up with is going to look like Emilio.”
Emilio Perez is an artist of many mediums, but is mostly known for his paintings. He works mainly with abstract paintings because he does not go about his process in the “typical” way an artist goes about his work, in the way that he does not have a specific theme or goal he wants to achieve at the end of his paintings. He does not work with a preconceived concept in his mind, but rather paints for the sake of painting. So the way he starts off his paintings is not with a sketch, but rather with the paint itself, which I thought was really interesting. I think many artists today try too hard to find a concept to work on that the art of the process begins to get lost, so I appreciate that Emelio does not do this and admits that. Once he gets the paint onto his surface, he then finds drawings within the splashes of color he created, so he starts to draw on the surface as long as the medium he used was thin, such as watercolors. When it comes to thick media such as oil paint, he waits for the paintings to dry, then uses a carving tool to cut lines into his paintings. Because of the sharp objects he uses against the surface, he only paints on wood in order to withhold the sharpness of the blade. Another method of painting that evolved from this is painting onto a surface, scraping away the entire painting so that all that is left is the tints of color, painting over it with white, then scraping off the white surface to reveal the color that lies behind the white, sort of like an encaustic painting. I have been to an encaustic workshop once, but I never would have thought to try it with oil paint, although I imagine it would get very expensive. Another thing I liked about Emilio’s art is that they are always large. He wants the viewer to have an intimate experience with his work, and I think large is an effective choice because of all the intricate lines he places on his work. A trait that I also thought was admirable was the fact that he is spontaneous when it comes to his paintings. He doesn’t get caught up with making sure he gets a certain image. He said, “When I go into a piece of work, I don’t worry about what it’s going to look like. Because whatever I end up with is going to look like Emilio.”
Anderson Ranch Arts Center - August 10, 2014
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