I was born in Santiago in 1987. When I was six, a box full of art books that belonged to my great-aunt Juana arrived at my house. I inherited them because she had no children and had died that year; that was perhaps my first approach to painting.
First, I studied arts and then travelled to Germany to study at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. I leased a room as a studio in the suburbs of the city where I continued painting. I walked for days, without any purpose in it. I drew obsessively as my wife silently embroidered woollen tapestries that she unfolded throughout the room.
At that time I discovered that in painting I was interested in that agile mystery that is never found where it is sought. I realized that the works that interested me the most were those that revealed its defeat. Instead, those other seamless ones, without possible or visible failures, they lost my attention as if the entire human dimension could only take refuge in the vulnerability of a painting.
Most of the time I need a specific feeling, topic or story to get into my studio and get to work, otherwise it is difficult to start. And while I paint, I try to never lose sight of that first feeling or idea, as if that were the only thing true while everything else seeks the most unpredictable path. I usually leave the paintings and take them later; it’s about feeling like a stranger to yourself and finding that vision that expands beyond your limits.