Interview with Andrés Lobato
Could you please introduce yourself and tell us how you started in the arts? and your first experience in art making?
I was always impressed by the drawings of Picasso and Miró, being a kid I had the measles and the doctor came home, and seeing the whole wall of my room full of my drawings he told me to never stop doing them, I guess somehow I paid attention to him. On one of the many occasions when my father took me to the Prado Museum I was absorbed with the Garden of Delights of Bosco, to the point of forcing him to buy me a book about the triptych, I was simply thrilled to see works of art, I suppose that unconsciously my emotions also learned that the natural thing if they wanted to develop was to try to create them. A first experience could be at the age of 14 when a contest was held at school and the drawing that I showed, that it was very Mironianan, was the most voted by the students, however the teachers decided to give the prize to another student that I remember doing very beautiful landscapes, I think we both went home that day very happy!
How would you describe yourself and your artwork?
They usually say that I am "intense", and I translate it myself as "passionate", I hope I am not mistaken because the intense is more physical than animic and does not interest me.
My works travel from my interior to the canvas, in a short as possible travel, to ensure a pure reflection, I move from figurative to the ethereal and abstract or viceversa, playing with color, shape and space I try to create a balance to express something, that's when I feel that the painting transcends and starts its own dynamic.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
When all the adornments that surround Art are removed, what remains is the search for beauty in its highest sense (ethical, aesthetic moral, etc.), and as such any feeling or situation that transmits that balance is for me an inspiration that make me feel Art by attraction between similars I suppose, but also situations that reflect its lack make me look for it in an act of survival, simply because Art is a vital necessity. To take the path of its search in any variant possible for me, gives meaning to life.
What emotions do you hope the viewers experience when looking at your art?
I have always said that Art is something that is able to stop an accelerated world to take time and think itself about what it is doing, and at the same time it is able to take a world that is standing still and it can make it move again.
I would like my paintings to transmit that energy in the form of emotion to anyone who wants to feel it, but I also know that each person will undoubtedly perceive it differently, after all the artworks are windows and each one chooses whether to look out or not and where to look.
When do you know that an artwork is finished?
You feel that the work in which you are working reaches a balance and it want to remain in it, it does not need your help anymore, it can express by itself, now you can only to see it, feel it and let it tell its stories to anyone who wants to hear them
What has been the most exciting moment in your art career so far?
There are many good times, but one that I can never forget was a couple of years ago when I participated in an exhibition in Monte Carlo, it was under the tent of the official Porsche boxes, next to the sea, we were all the morning placing the works and when we finish I went for a walk around the tent to see the other galleries before the opening, I seemed to see a Roy Lichtenstein in the distance so I approached and indeed it was, it gave me great joy but when I turned around I started see works by Ruhlmann, André Nadal, Matisse, Chagal, Picasso, Melik, César and other great masters, that made me drop to my knees literally and I recognize that some tears fell, I was exposing under the same tent as the great masters, not I think you could ask for more ... logically the director of my gallery finally got angry with me because I barely spent time in my space ...
How long does it take to produce one work?
I have painted artworks in one morning, others in several weeks and some with pen ball works in two or three months, even sometimes you know that you should leave a work and return back to it at another time, in relative terms I believe that time can be part of the technique, but creativity can never be a slave to it
What exciting projects are you working on right now? Can you share some of the future plans for your artworks?
I am developing the project of a book, which I call a travel book, in which I will try to reflect my evolution, from those first pen ball paintings, with only four available colors, almost always traced under an artificial light, even some of them created over one ironing board for not having material site and where I discovered that geometry is a language with an infinite alphabet, until the present time where I look for the colors mixing pigments depending on the natural light that I have at that moment and where I imagine worlds with a size that they do not fit in a canvas, an exciting journey, at least for me.
Do you have any upcoming events or exhibitions we should know about?
We have currently opened a dedicated exhibition with sixteen paintings of mine in Madrid, in an old palace next to the mythical Student Residence where the filmmaker Buñuel, the poet García Lorca and the painter Salvador Dalí met. I have also started working on some layouts for a Paris magazine for the coming summer.
Where do you see your art going in five years?
I hope to continue traveling through the world of Art and amazed more and more of everything I find, after all that is just indications of what remains to be discovered ...
