Artist Statement:
“Jose Manuel Merello’s paintings are very Mediterranean and Spanish. The influence of the Spanish and Italian artists, who he studied in the most important museums of Madrid and Spain, has been very important in his work. Merello recognizes Picasso, Matisse, Miró and another European painters in his own paintings, but he considers he has a personal style which join in a whole all the different artistic schools. He attaches importance to the technical and the intense draw where made, with doughy and sensual brushstrokes, a shocking and seductive art work.”
“Jose Manuel Merello’s paintings are very Mediterranean and Spanish. The influence of the Spanish and Italian artists, who he studied in the most important museums of Madrid and Spain, has been very important in his work. Merello recognizes Picasso, Matisse, Miró and another European painters in his own paintings, but he considers he has a personal style which join in a whole all the different artistic schools. He attaches importance to the technical and the intense draw where made, with doughy and sensual brushstrokes, a shocking and seductive art work.”
I had a hard time with his biography – as it is written with Spanish tense. “He paints and draws since he was a child, with essentially self-taught formation and based on the study of the big world Masters from all times which he contemplated in the Prado Museum of Madrid.” But basically he is saying that he has been painting since he was a child, and is mostly self taught, although he did study the works of the “masters”. In another statement it is said that he was influenced by Picasso and Matisse, which I think is obvious when looking at his work.
Merello believes that the drawing is as important as the painting. “A good drawing cannot in any way be unfavorably compared with a good painting. It is more, beneath every picture is an essential underlying drawing that sustains it, a skeleton that mobilizes it and gives it form. Any painting lacking of this base crumbles and appears flimsy.”
I like this school of thought, as I have always thought my drawings are better than when I try to lay paint to a canvas. I am working towards using the one to build the other, but I do not think I would ever be able to do a painting that I was proud of without the drawing first. While I like this school of thought for myself however, I do think that some people can paint just as well, if not better, without using a drawing first. I do not think that everyone has to start with a drawing.
One of the difficulties I’ve encountered when trying to do this style of art, is that I try to fix things, after I’ve tried to make them abstracted, so that they look wrong, but not in the right way. Because of this, the following quote from Merrello really hit home with me: “In painting and in drawing, technically speaking, things can be wrong done if they do not know how to make them correctly, but the bad made things must be “perfectly wrong made”. This way the result will always be good.“ Granted, I had to read it three times to understand it, but I don’t think that makes it any less true.
I like this school of thought, as I have always thought my drawings are better than when I try to lay paint to a canvas. I am working towards using the one to build the other, but I do not think I would ever be able to do a painting that I was proud of without the drawing first. While I like this school of thought for myself however, I do think that some people can paint just as well, if not better, without using a drawing first. I do not think that everyone has to start with a drawing.
One of the difficulties I’ve encountered when trying to do this style of art, is that I try to fix things, after I’ve tried to make them abstracted, so that they look wrong, but not in the right way. Because of this, the following quote from Merrello really hit home with me: “In painting and in drawing, technically speaking, things can be wrong done if they do not know how to make them correctly, but the bad made things must be “perfectly wrong made”. This way the result will always be good.“ Granted, I had to read it three times to understand it, but I don’t think that makes it any less true.
From what I found Jose Merello paints mostly still lifes and portraits of women., He explains that he chooses women as his subject matter this because he is a Spanish Artist who “is branded with fire for life.” Many of his works include fat women, beautiful, women, and old women, done in a way that reveals some sort of insecurity or struggle; struggle that Merello encountered growing up by walking through the streets of Madrid.
Personally, I prefer his paintings of women to his still lifes. I can feel that emotion he talks about in them, and I don’t get that same feeling from his still life paintings. It ight be because I can’t decipher what most of them are, but I think it is more than that. I think there is just more emotion to be felt where there are people portrayed.
References:
http://www.artistrising.com/shop/profile/37815/JOSE-MANUEL-MERELLO.htm
http://www.merello.com/thoughts-of-a-painter-art.htm
http://drawingatduke.blogspot.com/2012/10/jose-manuel-merello.html
References:
http://www.artistrising.com/shop/profile/37815/JOSE-MANUEL-MERELLO.htm
http://www.merello.com/thoughts-of-a-painter-art.htm
http://drawingatduke.blogspot.com/2012/10/jose-manuel-merello.html