J. Carlos S. V

“Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed”, William Blake.

I remember reading this quote in art class when I was a teenager, I’ll be honest I didn’t understand it. I was told it revolves around the story of Blake and his wife citing poetry passages to one another naked freed from “troublesome disguises”. Over the years I discovered more and more why the quote stuck with me. It resonated with my love of being free, naked and struck a chord with my admiration for the human form.

Fast forward a few years and my work stems from this love of beauty in the human form, I admire that everyone has beautiful parts inside and out, it’s very easy to forget this in the world we live in. My work is aesthetic in nature but doesn’t try to focus on perfection and rather focuses on celebrating the imperfections that make us all beautiful, unique and love ourselves.

The drawings and paintings merely exist to channel and voice my emotions, concepts, jests and obsession for how beautiful, sexy, erotic, kind and harsh people and their bodies can be. The themes and stories behind the pieces are there to be discovered by everyone who sees it and find their own “Traite du Narcisse” as well was enjoy the jests and jabs at the conventions of socially acceptable norms that go round in circles.

I found tales like the “sacred band of Thebes” and the tall tale of “Catherine the Great”, always filled me with the impression that the link between human beauty and sexuality is cyclical and changes with the times. The world deplores, condemns, tolerates, accepts, celebrates, enjoys then starts again when it suits their needs. My drawings try to indelicately enjoy the beauty of the physical form and the gratifying indulgence of sexuality and love. Often sarcastically pointing at the hypocrisy of this sexual social cycle and allowing the pencil, paint and paper to give a voice to the realm of the sexual, the beautiful and the passionate.

My visual style is reflective of such sexual contrasts and extremes, the light and shadow being a medium for the acceptable and unacceptable, the part of ourselves we hate and the parts we choose to show the world. The dark pencil lines and shading contour the part of the human body we may wish to hide, the light blanks out the parts we are used to seeing of ourselves. The pencil and paper attempt to flip our perception of the beautiful in all my subjects, allowing for the beauty of their figure, gesture and expression to be celebrated in the parts of ourselves we may often hide from the outside world.

My process begins with a person or a desire to express something I’m feeling, be it pain or love or feeling restricted. The themes will feature ropes, blindfolds, apples and mirrors which might represent and feature in my own dark way that feeling, helplessness, epiphany, heart or vanity. The men and women in my pieces are all a celebration of their own self love, focusing each piece on their favourite part of themselves whilst celebrating what they think they don’t love but perhaps should. The lines and contours of the piece evolve into seduction, sexuality and passion reflected in a pose or gesture of the delicate and soft human body. The colour and volatile brightness added to the pieces add a touch of playfulness to reflect the subject’s personality, inner beauty and charm.