Liquid Times

---

The second volume was a much more elaborate book, with texts for each drawing. The campaign was a success and there are still some copies available.

INTRODUCTION OF THE BOOK

The year 2020 was marked, as you all know, by the beginning of the world pandemic due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of Covid-19. For me it was a year of ups and downs, many insecurities and, of course, a lot of free time, which I was able to dedicate to drawing. And this dedication gave me the necessary strength to see a future. I shared these creations with the world through my social networks and they were well received. 

Months passed and, after more than a year with this project called labellecicatrice, in March 2021, I started a crowdfunding to finance my first art book, Love Yourself. The beginning was very good but after a few days I collapsed and the road became dark and difficult. Even so, I found strength from where there was none -for me it were still hard times- and I managed to edit, finally, one hundred copies of the book. I ended up exhausted, both physically and mentally, carrying almost all the work, dealing with numerous setbacks, especially in shipping. I learned a lot about the process and, above all, also about myself. After a few weeks, and after leaving behind that saturation, the satisfaction of the goal achieved came to light and the response of the people when they received it compensated for all my suffering. 

It was time to enjoy the book and show it to my acquaintances. In those talks I realized that I could talk for a long time about each drawing and that the story was also part of the work, but without me in front of it, that was lost. It was then that I began to think about what a second volume would be like in which I would explain the personal story of how I met each model (anonymously if the model wished), without sweeteners, but always with affection and gratitude for that generous act of opening up to me. That first idea has crystallized and here you have the result. It also serves as a tribute to all of them. The first book was a compilation, without much criteria, of everything I had done so far. Now, with the works chronologically ordered, I have added a small personal commentary in each drawing to talk about the evolution I have been going through. A small detail that gives coherence to the whole.

This compilation work, both in the first volume and in the second, gave me the necessary perspective to look back and draw conclusions from 2021. It was also a difficult year (at the time I am writing this, a new variant of the virus is terrorizing the whole world and some restrictions are returning), but one in which I lost some fears and gained the confidence to believe in myself. There were changes in my way of working, for example, opening up to a larger format, adding some materials and, conceptually, moving towards more complex compositions that would allow me to make small movement studies.
I had always understood figure drawing as a training for something more personal, a necessary step but one that had to be overcome.

And why Liquid Times? Volume I, Love Yourself, was intended to reflect on the love of oneself and on the beauty of bodies in general, also playing a bit with the double meaning that could be read in those two words. This volume II is entitled Liquid Times which, for me, has a triple meaning. During the creation of this book, the possibility arose to make an exhibition with some of the works included and to present it, I wrote a small text that I attach below and that serves me to talk about this very thing:

“We live in liquid, uncertain, flexible, fickle times. We are constantly starting from scratch and renounce long-term thinking, in love, in the workplace, in friendships….

Moving mainly through social networks is something that I perceive in my day to day life in a very raw way. And in my obsession to draw people around me, real or virtual, the renewal is constant, the interest is fleeting and yesterday is already past, old. Fortunately it is not always so and some muses (hated word) are still close and reflect the change in me (I am also liquid).

Movement, color and eroticism are liquid. Movement in multiple poses, arms and hands running across the skin, invisible dances. Color that dilutes in the mother liquid and ends in the rectangular paper, the skin of art. Eroticism that creates liquid, flows that embrace and transport pleasure. A triangle of elements that closes the circle of liquidity.”

 Reality escapes from art. It is only a language, a way of trying to capture it, or transmit it. But it, reality, always escapes. It’s like trying to look at the whole sky with a small telescope, you can get close to a part but you miss the whole. Perhaps the movement in the drawings is a response to that frustration. Trying to add up the beauty of all the gestures. Knowing, as much as we want to deny it, that the value of novelty is above that of the enduring, the commitment is unstable, sometimes nonexistent, and sometimes virtual. What excites us today, bores us tomorrow. A spiral in which we are all, myself included. This is why the priority is to learn to manage this new liquid world and to value it, even more, when it is not.

Thank you for helping me to solidify this project, enjoy the art and the reading!

---

The edition of the book was limited to 100 copies.