Festina Lente

Dream March -  130 x 100 cm. Oil on wooden panel. 2023

Take your time when in a hurry, that came to mind as me and my family commenced the long haul that moving from Spain back to my natal Buenos Aires would entail. These were the months during which the plan took shape and the reality of moving, yet again, a whole house and two studios, bore its weight on us.

The story behind this painting is retold in a long, and painful to paint, inscription on its base. To me the chronology read as follows: I did a small sketch about a snail figure carrying an structure, my wife referred a dream she had about a very similar scene, from which came the big pigeon and the house; later my daughter, 13 at the time, told of an analogous dream she had had, further sustaining the image as it formed. I couldn’t find any movie or reference we had been exposed to together, so I concluded I just had to exorcise the motive out of our collective minds.

I read the action from left to right, so this motion would seem a retreat, at first. The house in the shell is full of medievalesque notices and posters, a collection of memories, personal symbols and associative indexes pertinent to our life as a family. The feeling I aimed for was that of a biblical endeavour, the slowness and effort of changing that which surrounds you and makes part of you. I’m absolutely oblivious as to why the figures are smiling, that was not expected.

Stylistically I stretched a bit the grotesque here, but the scene demanded it, the idea just couldn’t be conveyed if watered down, I am unapologetically glad to have found an excuse to try this peculiar aesthetic. 

Really hope they find their way.