Santiago Carbonell - Mexico
--Carolyn J. Bennett
I first saw Carbonell's work at Art Miami '94 but this was my first opportunity to meet him. With the grace and maturity of his work, I was very surprised at his age. He's only 34. He lives in Mexico with his wife, Gabriella and their three young children.
Carbonell is an artist of great sensitivity and he is a man of gentle humor, who says of Gabriella, "She's a great wife and she is my best critic. She always tells me what's wrong. If she told me all the time, 'you are good', she says I would be spoiled."
Of his children, he does not consider an art career for them. He says, "The best you can hope for is that they will be their own person. They are going to be what they want." For Carbonell, he feels that to be an artist is not inherited. "Environment is more important than genes. My father loved art and when I was a little boy, I started going to the museums, listening to music, reading all the time. The love that your parents give you about the arts is what is important."
I asked him about the female figures in his work and his models. "I bring many women here to Miami because that is what they ask for. I don't only paint women. Last year I did an exhibition of monks. I like to use dancers as models because they are very comfortable with their bodies. They know how to move. They are not inhibited."
Roberto Gonzalez Garcia, curator, says of Carbonell's women: "Women by Carbonell do not belong to him, nor are they the bodies of models; they are ours, and belong to each of us, every night, at every dawn. In them, we recognize someone. And it is for this reason that such art conquers the onlooker who, when observing the work, caresses every centimeter to an involuntary extent, gliding fingers over the canvas, and then arriving at an awakening to find himself experiencing an exhibition by Santiago Carbonell."
Carbonell works "very slowly", he says. "I paint very slowly and they sell very fast. I am sad when a painting is sold because when I finish them I bring them to my house. Then, when I have an exhibition, I take them all down and my house is empty. My paintings need a lot of air. If they are too close, they compete with each other. One day, I would like to do an exhibit of just one painting."
I asked him about the dark backgrounds of the paintings shown at Art Miami. "I paint in a series. Sometimes very simple, sometimes very complicated. In this series, I was working with light and darkness. I'm getting lighter!"
With all the beauty this artist brings to the canvas, with all his talent and skill, he still has that doubt at the back of his mind that plagues most artists. "Sometimes I wake up and I think I no longer remember how to draw. An artist has to grow his spirituality -- art is in the heart and feelings. It moves through him from the eyes to the hands."
It was a great pleasure to spend time talking with this artist, to see the man behind the work. He exhibits at Praxis Arte International in New York in May.
Copyright © 1996, World Wide Art, Inc.
Copyright © 1996, World Wide Art, Inc.
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