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Gallery
THE EMERALD ALTAR
As I open my box of SECRETS, I want to play with you. Imagination, Creativity, Inspiration and other artistic-sounding words have nothing to do with it.
SECRETS--- yours and mine. Just as ancient alchemists used to chant over the gimoire of Hermes Trismegistus: "As It is above, so it is below; as it is below, so it is above. Together they are one."
STERN-FACED TEMPTATION
Little by little, like Russian dolls, one inside another, dreams and memories come forth. And we know somehow that they're the same little dolls that are hiding deep down inside ourselves.
Images that exist outside of time, past the furthest limits we can imagine. Temptation makes us pursue them, and we become lost beyond the edge of any map, no longer knowing whether it's desire or fear we're feeling.
SEARCH FOR THE LOST HEROES
Recapturing our wild years, those years when the universe seemed to spin aimlessly and no one knew what tomorrow would bring. Far beyond good taste or bad. Past feeling any regret. Red over a breath of ferid air, like a stoplight holding back the stink of green, rotting things.
There are times while working that one's conscience, brushstroke by brushstroke, gets lost among the dead leaves and mold.
FISSURES OF THE BREEZE
Transit of the Seven Gateways. Lacking the last garment (the last of the Seven Veils), Salome, the priestess who will become a goddess.
The ceremony of the eternal return. The sacred drama of the life, death, and resurrection of the god of fertility, and of the hot journey the goddess makes to the Underworld in order to bring him back to life. Only then will the winter be over and the life-force begin to break through the soil.
THE PATH OF DREAMS
Avalon, the inner kingdom of the dark woods and thickets. The land of Faerie, whose denizens absorb the energy of the sun and share it with nature. Beauty, who turns the white rose into a sword to dominate the Beast. Dreams, too, live there, in that delicate place where the wicked spells of the little folk hold sway.
THE SON OF BAPHOMET
Like an erection. Bursting suddenly from the unplumbed depths. Enigma, perhaps monster. No way to tell if it's reality or illusion, or even whether either exists.
We can call him MERROWS, like the Irish people of the sea. We can fear him, as the Greeks feared THANATOS. We can worship him as the Templar worshipped BAPHOMET.
DARK WORDS
A swarm of bats, from the ancient Incas' stories of the land of Popol Vuh, flies on to the land of Death.
Seeing images and painting them makes takes me deep into my mind, to a place of words not found in any dictionary.
IMMACULATE
Unsullied
Who wants a clean slate? It's sad --- I'd rather have a few stains in my dreams.
Immaculate, who covers herself with her victims' blood. Like the Hindu goddess KALI, who can defeat demons in that acid world where even the most powerful gods run screaming.
It's time to forget about boring "concepts". Time for Immaculate Conceptions with a few little bloodstains.
COMMUNION
I have worked over every centimeter of that blank piece of paper with a chisel. I have tortured my eyes as I gazed over every little bit of that architecture, asking myself what little thing I could have forgotten.
It's been a long time since I let my desires carry me away from the mundane daily routine. Now I can't think of any more excuses.
UNDER THE BLACK WIND
When you dive into darkness, when you make that long journey running from yourself, never touching the ground, you may read somewhere that fear and desire are the same, that falling is like an orgasm. Your plunge into black depths will fill you with ecstasy and terror.
I open the window less and less and hide even more in the darkest corners.
In memory of Munch and his painting "VAMPIRE".
GOLDEN KABALA
It's cold and wet in the swamp; your skin is clammy; the metal is like ice against you. But, above, in the trees, are warm, reddish brown clouds, casting heat on your skin and the metal.
As far as the flight of an arrow, chills turn to warmth and back again.
DIANA, intruder in the fable of the TROLLS.
THE VOICE OF DECEIT
From the masks of Greek theater. From photos of The Phantom of the Opera. Deceptive.
Sometimes through a lie you can arrive at beauty, not an ordinary beauty, but the beauty of excess and fear.
THE ULTIMATE SWORD OF POWER
Endless legends, lost, revolting in time. Heroes, druids and damsels came face to face with the lord of the night.
When I was a boy, it was always easy to find a pathway into the dark side. All I had to do was close my eyes and start dreaming.
DIANA OF BITRU
A place where the creatures who watch over the Devil's daughter peer out, drooling. On the balcony where you can see those skyscapes that always seem insignificant.
The perspective of uncertainty.
Miss Diana Vaughan, BITRU's Palladaist daughter, will receive a gift from the devil ASMODEUS: the tail of Mark the Lion.
STARS OF HEAT
FREYA was the goddess of fertility and the mating instinct among the Vikings.
Freya, most beautiful of the goddesses, leader of the Valkyries, who carried the dead warriors to Valhalla, the hall where the most valiant continued to feast and fight until Ragnarok, the hour when everything would be destroyed, even the gods.
Freya, who offered her favors to the dead, even to the hunchbacked dwarves of the Underworld.
THREADS OF DESIRE
Fireflies float above the water's surface and illuminate the desire that runs down her fingertips like electricity.
The Lady of the Lake waits for Excalibur's return.
THE CHAPEL OF DARKNESS
She, like a caterpillar spinning its cocoon; he, like a spider weaving a web around its prey.
And I, always in front of a blank sheet of paper, surrounded by brushes and tubes of paint, afraid to take my eyes off what I'm drawing. My vision could get lost in the walls or I could end up daydreaming it all away.
DIAGONAL OF DREAMS
Woman, the serpent, the moon and water: they're all eternally related. Hieroglyphics without any other words.
RED SWATH
Destroying the balance of ordinary anatomy. Destroying line to create movement. Destroying the limits of human resistance. Destroying the moral strictures that have been tying us down. Destroying the boundaries between character and audience. To destroy the audience itself.
PILGRIMAGE
For some Native Americans, insects are the souls of the dead who come back to the realm of the living.
On her throne sits HECATE, Greek goddess of sky and night, bearer of plaques and sudden death. Descended from the Titans, she presides over magic and spells with a torch in her hand. Creator of sorcery, the center of all paradoxes, a link to the shadowlands.
MULTIPLIED BY ICE
As I walk through the streets, I see a strange world. I draw it all on graph paper. Every stroke is an effort. Thousands of them come together to produce all this foolishness. I can't get the look I want, even though thousands of images rush through my mind.
I miss having some imaginary facial expression that will carry me right through all those little two-dimensional squares.
WINDOW ON BUONARROTI
Dante speaks of painting. In The Divine Comedy, he gives us terrifying descriptions of Dite, the eternal city: crimson pinnacles, red-hot iron peaks, illuminating for all eternity the sad shadows of that vast loneliness.
Michelangelo writes with his art. In The Final Judgement, we are bowled over by the power of his composition, by the tension between the Christ's pain and the sweet image of the virgin, by the image of Dante's Inferno.
Dante and Michelangelo: the connection between literature and art. Like the pillars of the Temple of Solomon, they are the gateway to another world.
GHOST KING
It's time to take a break from my palette of bright colors, to depart from sinister rituals in the dark.
Let's lose ourselves for a moment in something soft and white: a story of youthful love in the cold mountain air.
SECRET REFLECTIONS
The mirror is deceptive. It's a secret dialogue like the one between you and me. It's a lie that makes us dream.
The mirror's reflection is something that shows up in all mythologies, and in all paintings through the ages. That's why I chose this image for the cover.
BLACK FLIGHTS
Soaring on the wind, silhouetted against the moon, the black, sinuous figure bursts out of the night sky.
This is dedicated to the world of comics. Just like mythology, comics are an inexhaustible source of gods and heroes.
THE HAND OF THREE CIRCLES
HADES, king of the Underworld, the dark-faced god, living in the shadows, who never --- well, hardly ever --- shows himself.
It was love at first sight when he saw PERSEPHONE. Using his divine powers, he opened up the earth beside her, seized her and dragged her down to the depths of his gloomy realm. Every year, Persephone slips past Hades' watchful eye and returns to earth. That's when spring begins.
THE ACACIA LEAVES
Ingredients:
A green tree in the middle of desert sands. Symbol of the immortality of the soul. The sacred tree of the Egyptians. In Asia, the tree symbolizes the north and winter.
The leaves capture the sun's energy and turn it into nourishment. To the Chinese, the leaf is one of the eight symbols of happiness and prosperity.
The cloak, symbol of metamorphosis to the Celts, is what protects the wise man from the world.
A MILLION TEARS
The prehistoric Mother goddess was sometimes represented as a creature with the head of an owl and the body of a woman. The owl symbolized the soul's flight after the death and its return to earth in another body.
In the background is a circle, the shape of the goddess's belly, and the shape of the Celtic cauldron of regeneration, whose bloody fumes drove worshipers mad.
VAPORS OF FORGETFULNESS
Inspired by the caves of Zugarramundi in Basque country, in whose crevices witches' covens once met. They are surrounded by lush, green vegetation; it's a beautiful spot.
The green here is the alchemist's secret fire, which could transform lead into gold, and turn a monster into a shining vision of beauty.
FURTIVE SIGNAL
I think most of us are fond of getting places in a roundabout way than in a straight line. The journey is always more fun than the arrival; the ritual is more exciting than the result.
It would be hard for me to talk about this or any other painting in a direct way. Work your way around it, wending your way through the labyrinth of candles, each one a point of light, as in the Colonnade of Bernini. And be careful, don't get lost in...well, I'd better stop.
THE HEART OF THE SCALES
Now you see it, now you don't. Opening a door into what's obvious and locking it behind you. Light and darkness. The balance between two extremes: Sex and Death.
HONEY FROM THE SHADOWS
Every little line on the page represents time and effort (and that's no joke).
There's a waiting period while the mind draws the scene step by step --- just as, lying on the ground, are all the metal weapons that have transformed a mighty warrior into a voluptuous woman who can seduce even the foulest beasts.
ECHO OF THE MOON
Botticelli's Birth of Venus.
Out of the moonlight she comes, motherless, URANUS' daughter. There's no need for a clamshell and the sea-foam: she springs out of the darkness of the earth, from the winds that sing of sensuality rather than from ZEPHYRUS and CHLORIS, FLORA is out of place here, too: no need for a garland of flowers to cover the icy blue.
And thus we end with a birth.
GALLERY PAGE 2