I would categorize myself as a contemporary realist painter. I started to paint 20 years ago and have gravitated towards oil as a medium during the last 10 years. I try to bring my particular vision to the subjects of my paintings, manipulating the environment, the values, hues and edges until I'm satisfied and captured the essence of what I want to say.
I usually start with a charcoal drawing of the subject, where I can explore my composition, get my scale and proportions correctly and then I transfer the drawing to a toned canvas. I work with layers of oil painting, usually between 2 and 4, depending on the subject. I start defining the large shapes and values and each layer brings extra refinement to the one underneath. I do not aim to be photorealistic, it is my opinion that cameras do that pretty well already. Of course, good quality photographic references have become almost indispensable in modern times to create realistic paintings in the studio. I learned photography for this reason and the vast majority of my paintings are based on live modeling or photographs I took during modeling sessions, with the exception of some commissioned portraits.
I enjoy creating surrealistic, magical and mythological paintings. I tend to choose a subject and explore several variations of the same theme, like on my Eve's series. In this series instead of portraying Eve in the biblical sense, I represent them as women in different contexts, a little erotic and surrounded by enigma, and of course, there is always an apple somewhere on the painting.
