L'Entretien avec Alvaro Marzan - When creation allows introspection
Pour cette nouvelle édition de l’Entretien, Art Work Circle s’est entretenu avec l’artiste plasticien Alvaro Marzan. L’occasion de parler d’expérimentation créative et d’interpretation.
Introduce yourself in few words :
I’m a Spanish artist, mainly painter. I’m vegetarian on and off, I love yoga and eastern philosophies.
How and when did you get in touch with art?
I was always drawing when I was a child. My family, my father particularly, supported me a lot so I continued. At some point, I just knew I wanted to be a painter. I’m really happy that I kept that dream alive.
Tell us about your artistic approach :
It’s about the process of painting. Process is very important, I always begin with some ideas on my mind, some colours I want to work with. That’s the starting point and the process usually takes me somewhere I didn’t expect at the beginning. There are lots of accidents, mistakes, trials, all the experimentations during the process are like a sediment for the image. They make it more rich and complex.
Usually, the result surprises me. I don’t expect what I find and I try to keep that element of surprise and spontaneity in the artwork. The process of painting itself directs everything. I also ask myself a lot of questions; what’s the interest of this image, what’s the interest of painting today? Is this intense enough, is it too abstract, too realistic, too easy or too difficult? At the end this pressure makes me go beyond my initial limit.
Where do you find your inspiration?
What message/emotions do you want to give through your artworks?
I don’t know if I want to communicate, consciously, any emotions, but what I expect is that the persons who see the paintings are going to experiment something similar to what I’m feeling. My feelings about painting usually are about surprise, joy and mystery. I hope the visitors of my exhibitions sense a bit of these elements.
As my images aren’t very realistic, I often have people who project themselves into the painting, telling me “That’s a bird”, “I see a face”, etc.. Perhaps my idea was a completely different thing but I like that they are completing or giving a personal interpretation to it.
Do you have a creation memory you would like to share?
I’m very fond of the paintings I did for the exhibition at neimënster this year… I think those artworks appeals to me in a special way because the process was very intense, it pushed me to grow as a painter. I used new colours I was not using before (funny thing, it was a very “yellow” period), I experimented a lot with the material (oil) and it’s possibilites… I also switched from oil on paper to oil on canvas, which was a total game changer.
It was great, those pieces gave me a much better understanding of what I wanted to do with my painting.
If you can choose only one artwork that you are the proudest of?
What are your future projects?
What was the first thing you did this morning: I talked to my wife
What is the principal subject of your work: Emotions and colours
You never leave your house without … My keys
Your happy place: My home or my atelier
Your favorite word : It’s an Italian expression “stammi bene”. It means something like “stay well for me”.
Your guilty pleasure: Playing chess or videogames until late
What’s your dream project : An exhibition with huge paintings and sculptures, something big.
Crédits photos : AWC