I was born in Bogotá, Colombia, 1972. Childhood was spent in several small towns with my family. In my 9 years we settled in Bogotá. Of those places I have left memories and feelings of people, varied landscapes and climates. And above all, colorful: learning to swim in the rivers of color Santander cocacola on farms, the rain and wet and sticky warmth near the Magdalena, the red earth of Barrancabermeja, Santander, as the name implies, was scarlet red, amidst the green grass this color is making its way in a way that it seemed as meat from the land, arrived in Bogotá, the savannah. I am always impressed by the beauty of the Savannah, fog and colors, its many green. Other Gabriel, a tantico better known than I, a Colombian like myself to be more specific coastal and writer, Gabriel Garcia, said that his arrival in Bogotá savannah sweet described thus: "The only thing that made me doubt that the Sabana de Bogotá is the most beautiful in the world is the sea in places. For you I say so! ". I'm sure the other writer García, Federico, would have satisfied his desire for truth in my previously beautiful Sabana de Bogotá. Today was impressed how the Sabana de Bogotá was filled with the gray of economic development: housing, sheds and greenhouses.
In Bogotá I impact their contrasts (again the colors), variety of races, a lot of gray in the sky and architecture, but also the bluest blue in your skies, green meadows, and much red building, brick .
In high school the study was not my best friend, only the language classes, geography, and art or music. In the lounge clueless me a fly, the chimneys of factories in the industrial zone where he studied and if I touched the side of the window, knots or errors of the glass and the effect of raindrops against the window. Start drawing with some interest in the intervening years the school. They were mainly the countryside. The memory of the land shown on my drawings Santander school years, a reference to the red dirt roads, such as skin wounds, is made to the meadow from walking on it. The drawing was a haven. Also drew faces and bodies of women and men drawn from fashion magazines, imaginary landscapes and unfamiliar cities, tourist magazines, drawing clothes and dresses. No particular artistic interest rather imagine that as an exercise in identity: looking for realism in my images, for the pleasure of knowing the range of one color or technique, to fill my time. I did not save almost any image of that era. Eros frequently walked by these drawings.
In recent years the school holidays come with peers and the great recochas. He was not clear what to study because it could be art, architecture or other, so I spent a couple of years of indecision at the end of high school. After school was out of the closet, a little rest and laziness doing an English course a system there and there, the friendships, the rumba, "living la vida loca." And of course drawing and painting which would overturn feelings and experiences. Study several months drawing and proportion of the human figure in the artist's workshop Bogota Ricardo Monroy.
In 1990 he entered a study Fine Arts. In past semesters there mainly remember Basic Workshop classes, Expression, Drawing with Model, Art History, Aesthetic Appreciation and Zen painting my taste is intensified by capturing the human figure within a realistic work concept. Initially, within the artists who most impressed me were the Bogotá Luis Caballero, the Cartagena Alejandro Obregón, Francis Bacon English and always, Pablo Picasso. Interest would then movements like informality, expressionism, surrealism and abstraction: Gaudí, Miró, Rotkho, Hundertwasser, O'Keeffe, Kandinsky, Cardenas, Rojas and other teachers whom I thank. Writers on art of imagination and symbolism remember with particular fondness Bachelard.
Dwell on the images, especially those of the first stage at the University Jorge Tadeo Lozano, a couple of painful issues that I went through in life at that time, resulting in frequent dark colors, shapes, figures fragile as butterflies in the shadows small rooms, walls, doors and windows closed or houses without doors or windows, faceless beings, sometimes with chains, weak light beams, etc.. At the same time, love will come another major theme of my work: the esoteric. With its symbolism will come out of nowhere to enhance and enrich my imagination. All this would push me to symbolize and abstract. The human figures tend to camouflage since blended into the landscape or insinuate themselves into man-made items such as boats or stairs, or architectural spaces as silhouettes of buildings or homes. Arise in these images almost human sensuality of the forms of nature and symbolic or metaphorical possibilities they contain.
On leaving university I have the opportunity to travel around South America and learn something of his artistic and craft, participate in a couple of exhibitions in art galleries in Bogota circuit and in some contests, and performing some shows in places no formal art circuit, such as craft fairs or art fairs: Craft Fair of Cordoba - Argentina, Ministry of Social Protection, Atlantis Plaza Gallery, Academy of Arts Pierrot, Prodicom Institute (Production and Distribution Community) Art New to Cali, Bogotá Foundation Art Connection - BAC, Waiting Room Gallery, Gallery Square House in Bogota.
Technically, my creative process I've worked in two-dimensional media, drawing and painting and, in particular, the technique of oil over others because it gives me great plasticity of slow drying. Watercolor is followed by spontaneous. I made paintings with different materials in which I express my unconscious, I am interested that each work is an aesthetic experience, art and creative in finding any novelty, despite knowing that one way or another becomes the same issues and the evolution of language is often slow, and often repeated. I hope the viewer to feel and interpret with freedom. Currently I also draw drawing and painting, crafts, sculpture, photography and digital, the latter being most appropriate for the lifestyle I led the last 4 years touring the country again by working with human rights NGO, further knowledge of the realities of my Colombia.
Art has given me admiration for life, macro-micro relationship cosmos and the phenomena related to light as an element that evolves becoming beings and things. Interested in Yoga and Art Therapy, I teach informal education workshops that explore people look at their emotions and from there to express their creative potential.
Landed again in Bogota in 2010 and resumed the game color and shape, for now, with pictures and digital processing of the same and the images created during these years of new trips. Preludes name of this series of images refers to the beginning of a new era, with new signing, not to renege on a legacy as a joke I've heard relatives, but as another tribute to the legacy of always putting the name along with his mother's surname, Laverde, leaving Gabriel Laverde as you can see in recent pictures.
Welcome and welcome!
Colombia
