THINKING IN IMAGES
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Why draw with graphite and leave everything else behind?
The absence of artifice brings me mental clarity, almost like a form of meditation. It untangles the knot of ideas in my mind and gives them order. It feels much like sitting down at a perfectly organized worktable.
I hold a Fine Arts degree from the Complutense University of Madrid. I furthered my studies at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart, Germany, where I spent an academic year under the guidance of artist Birgit Brenner. Later, I had the privilege of attending a painting workshop with Antonio López in Madrid.
Over the years I have worked across several disciplines—including painting, photography, video installation, and writing—exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions in Spain, Germany, Grenada (Caribbean), Switzerland, and Italy. Eventually, however, drawing became the language through which I found the most meaningful way to develop my artistic research.
I am drawn to graphite because of its simplicity. It is a humble medium and, precisely because of that, an extraordinarily free one. Artistic creation does not require much more. Drawing forces me to slow down, to think, and to strip away everything that is not essential. I rarely include an element unless it contributes something meaningful to the work.
I am fascinated by the way an image gradually emerges from the blank surface of the paper. A line upon the void—sometimes intense, sometimes barely suggested—finally completed in the mind of the viewer. I have always found it remarkable that a drawing can be built as much through absence as through presence.
Hyperrealism has never been my goal. I do not believe technical skill alone can justify a work of art. Technique only matters when it serves meaning. At a time when perfection can be generated by machines, I find increasing value in imperfection and in the traces of human experience. Drawing preserves the marks of thought, of time, and of the hand that created it. Much of its strength lies in that vulnerability.
Portraiture frequently appears in my work because I am interested in capturing personality, identity, contradiction—perhaps even the soul. In my series The Dark Gallery, I portrayed murderers and criminals who could easily pass unnoticed in everyday life. At first, I was certainly attracted by the technical challenge of rendering particular skin textures or facial expressions. I do not deny the pleasure of losing myself in details. But eventually I realized that this was not what truly motivated me to draw.
The real question was different: is it possible to represent evil? Is there any visible trace of what leads a human being to commit a terrible act?
The truth is that I sometimes think in images.
It is as if I were drinking from an ancient source or looking into the depths of our collective unconscious, borrowing archetypes we all recognize in order to speak about power, transformation, guilt, identity, violence, or vulnerability. Myths, religious iconography, literary characters—images that belong to our shared cultural heritage and continue to resonate because they still have something to tell us.
I believe images speak a language different from words. Just as an unfinished line is completed by the viewer’s eye, a symbol is completed through the viewer’s own experience. We may not rationally understand why an image moves, disturbs, or unsettles us, yet something happens before explanation begins. Images connect directly with a part of ourselves that has not yet found words.
My work Medusa emerged from this understanding of symbolism. For centuries Medusa was portrayed as a monster; today she can also be read as a victim of violence and abuse of power. I chose to represent her through the visual language of Christian martyrdom, incorporating the golden halo and the palm branch—symbols traditionally reserved for those who suffered unjustly. By placing this iconography within a mythological figure, Medusa ceases to speak only about herself and instead becomes a reflection on guilt, innocence, and the ways societies construct punishment.
I am not interested in illustration for its own sake. I am interested in using familiar symbols to pose contemporary questions.
This approach also informs works such as Iphigenia in Aulis, where myth once again becomes a vehicle for exploring human transformation. In this piece I sought to depict the moment when pain ceases to be a scream and becomes something silent, profound, and enduring. I wanted to create an unsettling image—not because of what it explicitly shows, but because of what it suggests.
Writing is part of the same creative search. In 2024 I published the novel Midnight in the Garden of the Suicides, which adopts the appearance of a Gothic fantasy narrative while actually exploring personal transformation. For me, writing and drawing arise from the same necessity: transforming ideas into images, whether those images are made of graphite or of words.
In truth, I do not really know how else to explain my work.
I am simply someone who, sometimes, thinks in images.
MEDUSA
