Password Reset

Please enter your e-mail address. You will receive a new password via e-mail.

Tales on Pen

By On · 3 Comments · In Painting, Tales on Pen, Visual Arts

Painted in 1999 in NYC,  using restaurant paper table covers and pen, Tales on Pen is the 2nd art series by Guillermo de Llera. Having moved to the Big Apple at the time, and finding resources hard to find, turning to simple and close-by tools was the perfect solution to my conundrum at the time. There was an Italian restaurant next door, which I would usually visit to have a decent espresso like they made back home in Portugal. I would sit and doodle on the paper table cover, sometimes for hours, and the Italian waiters recognizing a fellow Mediterranean in need of such a medium of expression began to provide me with large pieces of paper to draw on and do my thing. These are the resulting pieces which were not sold,  given away or lost before being registered on camera.


Get Adobe Flash player

 

 

Tales on Pen: the Inside Story

 

I has left the Beyond the Haze series back in Portugal, figuratively and symbolically, and I wanted to try something new and contrary. So I decided to ‘put some thought’ into painting this time and try to tell abstract stories through symbolism and design. Like a patchwork of loose thoughts and semblances of ideas stitched together by parallel or crossing lines, negative space or pattern work, Tales on Pen was an innocent attempt to put these wandering thoughts and impressions on what I was going through on paper. Almost a catharsis or exorcism of sorts, for the big city was an overload of information for me, bursting at every moment with a million stimuli to the senses calling to be put down and recorded on paper. So I did, and Tales on Pen was born to the world. Drawing and writing continuously was the hallmark to my experience in the big apple and I remember it fondly.

 

Tales on Pen: the Underlying Flair

 

The unconscious is a brilliant pool of loose images, old notions and faded memories. From there we fish the sparks that kindle our thought processes and form our interpretation of the present. From there we build our nightly dreams and from there we create art. It is my favourite water-hole and my personal Dreaming. According to aboriginal creation-myths in the beginning the ancients created the world by dancing, singing and naming things around the primordial water-holes. I partake in this belief in my own way, and I take action by doing that very same thing in the very same way.

So drawing loose pieces and jumbling them together, connecting them at places, overlapping them in others is as haphazard yet full of intent that is not necessarily part of our waking reality, but part of what is ‘behind the scenes’ so to speak. Tales on Pen were tales, but they were tales that did not come from conscious thinking, planning or elaborating, but instead were tales from within.

 

———————————————————————————————————————–

 

SOLD OUT

SOLD

The Thought

SOLD

I Walk

SOLD

Staring at the Unknown

SOLD

Float With The Current

SOLD

Function, Form and Content

end of

————–Tales on Pen————–

Tales on Pen

Loved Tales on Pen but I want to visit other Visual Arts or go back to the Home Page

The Golden Trees

By On · Add Comment · In Painting, The Golden Trees, Visual Arts

Painted between 2009 and 2010, The Golden Trees were a new direction for me after finishing The First Wave series and going through all the showings and exhibitions. I wanted to do a series based on a story, so after sitting down and writing How the Earth Became a Mother, a creation myth, I went on to paint the images of the Golden Trees. These were the resulting paintings.

Get Adobe Flash player

The Golden Trees was displayed in exhibit during March and April 2010 at Chambre Separee in Stockholm, Sweden and in March and April 2011 in Lisbon, Portugal for a massive art&music live exhibition at the LX Factory in Lisbon entitled: the XL experience @ the XL factory.

  • March/April 2010: Chambre Separee, Stockholm, Sweden
  • March/April 2011: LX Factory, Lisbon, Portugal

 

The Golden Trees: the Inside Story


For a long time I had been entertaining the idea of one day working with the whole imagery and concepts related to the Golden  Tree. What appealed to me the most is the prevailing notion incurring in so many myths, stories and spiritual philosophies, (or at least in  my interpretation of them),  that the tree, with its roots firmly grasping the dark depths of the earth, and arms forever yearning and reaching out into the light, is symbolic of an internal human condition.

It could also be interpreted as a metaphor for our dual condition as sentient beings, drinking from both dark and light, in a balancing act of experience, between the cold, concrete material reality and the light and elusive spiritual  one.

Without delving too deeply into this endless potential of possible relations, I just  wanted to outline part of what the Golden Trees  symbolizes to me, because this is the inside story behind this series, and this is the notion that, above all,  colours and permeates all paintings in it.

And here, besides the intent of each action, there is also the context during which the action has taken place. What I mean is this: Regardless what symbolism the intellect has chosen as a vehicle through which to display itself, the concurrent emotional experiences or baggage is what truly comes through as the invisible soul of what is conveyed. To make it clearer, it is as if the greater quality of melody; its emotional impact arose in greater part not from its   face-value, or obvious technical expression, but from the imprinted energy and characteristic organic details that lie behind.

And  here the Gold comes into play. In many ways, Gold symbolizes the Sun  on Earth, here serving as a dual metaphor for its fertilizing properties; light that brings life, and its spiritual properties; light that dispels darkness. Therefore when Owl-Man, The God-Head or Elemental Spirit of the Owl, comes down to Earth and rests on a tree, then that tree becomes Golden or bathed in Golden light.

Consciously,  I have  decided to omit the Owl from this series and  focus solely on  the trees, for therein lie enough dimensions and  avenues for  exploration. Each thing or entity alone can be source for a  myriad of extrapolations and interpretations of form, content and meaning.

 

The Golden Trees: the Underlying Flair

 

To have intricacy in simplicity; segmented areas with the least possible gradation. Avoiding blurring colours without distinct divisions; wearing down forms to their root shapes, without hiding meaning, or concealing layers.

Focusing on that which catches the eye, the background becomes blurred and abstract.

We can only give our full attention to one thing at one time, otherwise we are divided, and still sometimes the object of our focus shows its other face; that of the world without science, bound only by the depths of our imagination; limited only by a cage of our doing.

Emulating tendencies from past ages, there is a concerted effort here to avoid elaborate perspective work or even shade and gradation to enable depth to rise in a different way; from the imagination of the observer.

As in the series: The First Wave, there is an attempt to break shapes down to some representational essential form, simplifying detail, synthesizing and re-moulding a new image from it, much like one would do with a logo or symbol.

In fact the work is in reality building up from symbols of the represented forms, adding new layers and ‘re-clothing’ the unit after having stripped it down from its obvious every-day realistic shape.

Drawing the curtain of the apparent world and painting the world behind the scenes would be a good motto to this series, and so would the concept of dreaming trees, but in the very end after all that process of elaboration of what I wanted to do; what I wanted to reference, and where I wanted to go with all this; all the planning and programming, I left all of it behind to be just an influencing and limiting subconscious agreement, and the motivation came solely from on source: painting pretty pictures that my baby daughter would like.

As I progressed in each painting I would ask her if she liked it. If she said that she did, I would continue; if she didn’t I would drop it altogether and start a new one. The underlying flair here is that small children are pure in their approach; their personal judgement isn’t tainted by social judgement and their response is as honest as may be.

 

Buy existing pieces or Order custom paintings

 

 

 


end of

————–The Golden Trees————–

The Golden Trees

Loved The Golden Trees but I want to visit other Visual Arts or go back to the Home Page

Beyond the Haze

By On · Add Comment · In Beyond the Haze, Painting, Visual Arts

Painted between 1997 and 1998, Beyond the Haze was the first series of paintings by Guillermo de Llera. Motivated by a school teacher who dared him to paint “without thought” and to bring in the work, Guillermo soon discovered the pleasure of abstract automatic painting. It allowed to be free from the drudge of ordinary school life and expectations, and to do 2 of his favourite things at once: to listen to music and to forget himself. Beyond the Haze is about letting go and returning to the source within, not within the mind where noise tends to prevail, but within the heart where emptiness is purity. These are the resulting paintings:

 

Get Adobe Flash player

 

 

Beyond the Haze: the Inside Story

 

One of the defining moments in my career as an artist was during that hour when my art history professor dared me to paint something deep without thinking almost 20 years ago. I had been told before that I should draw, paint and whatnot but it had never hit home before and all suggestions had met with resistance until that one moment. I went home after the challenge, which to be honest was really the necessary spark behind my first attempts, and laid down in silence, wondering how I should start. The decision could only be what it was, to go at it like a child would, and just spread the colour on the canvas without thinking consciously where they should go and how they should be matching or melting with each other. After that the only course to take was to follow personal feeling and taste, adding what could make what was before me more pleasant to the eye (to my eye), and experimenting wildly with whatever technique rose to mind.

If I didn’t like the outcome or believe the approach I was taking would succeed, then I would just bury it in paint and start again. Beyond the Haze series, I  must say, was one of the most cathartic and fulfilling experiences to date because the setting and conditions were just right, therefore I hold this series so close to heart. They are living memory.

 

Beyond the Haze: the Underlying Flair

 

When things are bent out of shape; undefined; without form, they are full of potential, as in an embryonic stage, within the very source of all creative manifestations. The undefined leads to guessing, imagining,wondering. Only things that are finished are done with growing and destined to die and return to the source. The underlying flare behind Beyond the Haze was an attempt to somehow tap into that feeling that comes from being in between defined ideas, to be in that place where everything is possible and up for grabs. That place that coupled with confidence and faith is exciting, thrilling and wonderful, but that accompanied by fear is pure terror and uncertainty. Standing in between borders has always been my game for some deep-rooted reason, perhaps because I have always felt like a foreigner to where I was staying, yet it never meant that I had to confront risk with resistance, but quite the opposite. On another personal note to describe what was behind the series Beyond the Haze, and to describe precisely why I chose that very name, is the fact that I am a memory disabled individual, and therefore the past is a haze to me, and yesterday a mist. It is a quality that allows me to focus only on today and tomorrow, but a social hindrance nonetheless.

Beyond the Haze reaches beyond memory and beyond the mist, and goes deep into the subconscious, interpreting emotion as transition and shapes as colours. Since the challenge was to paint without thinking I gave myself whole-heartedly to the adventure and dived into the past; into the experiences that influenced the present at the time, painting only what arose on a subconscious level. Beyond the Haze was my introduction to the beauty within the experience of painting as a form of expression of what us deep within and cannot be grasped with reason or memory, and since then I have never let go.

 

———————————————————————————————————————–

 

SOLD OUT

SOLD

Change in the World

SOLD

Murals of Dab-Shi

SOLD

Staring at the Unknown

SOLD

The Three Stages

SOLD

The Bull-Path

SOLD

Shell-Sea

SOLD

ShapeShifting

end of

————–Beyond the Haze————–

Beyond the Haze

Loved Beyond the Haze but I want to visit other Visual Arts or go back to the Home Page

Outside Looking In

By On · 1 Comment · In Outside Looking In, Painting, Visual Arts

Painted in 2011, the Outside Looking In series was based on a simple concept: to create art within art; to create windows or frames into other worlds.

Get Adobe Flash player 

 

Outside Looking In: the Inside Story

 

The main concept for Outside Looking In was very simple: to create frames around sceneries and give the idea that we are looking out through a window or door. The twist is that we are not looking out, we are looking in, as the frames are external frames; the outside of the windows, hence the title Outside Looking In. Inside the buildings to which the frames belong are sceneries, and the metaphor is also a simple one, although the connection is not very apparent: Inside we all carry a private world, built mostly of our own imagination and personal interpretation of everything we have experienced and believe to be real, and through our eyes others can glimpse, or to be more accurate ‘sense’ that private world we all carry with us. That is the reasoning behind the saying: “The Eyes are the Windows to the Soul”.

For Outside Looking In I wanted to do a series of pieces built around these ideas, interpreting that personal world as abstracted sceneries and the eye as the frame that surrounds and involves that private world.

Working with me on a few pieces was master sculptor and all-round artist and handy-man Filipetty, helping with carving and moulding. He was my go-to guy when my brain would be bursting with ideas for new things to create for the Outside Looking In series. We would brain-storm about the possibilities and technical difficulties, and together come up with a game-plan. Without his knowledge and belief the work in progress would have suffered and become infinitely more difficult.

 

Outside Looking In: The Processes

 

Road to Jali
Road to Jali

The building process for Road to Jali from the Series: Outside Looking In.

15 Photos

The Watching Inca
The Watching Inca

The building process for The Watching Inca from the Series: Outside Looking In.

12 Photos

The Black Hills
The Black Hills

The building process for The Black Hills from the Series: Outside Looking In.

35 Photos

Kún-Gántl-Xunts
Kún-Gántl-Xunts

The building process for Kún-Gántl-Xunts from the Series: Outside Looking In.

49 Photos

The Hills of Wu
The Hills of Wu

The building process for The Hills of Wu from the Series: Outside Looking In.

46 Photos

The Pilgrim Mountains
The Pilgrim Mountains

The Pilgrim Mountains assembled

3 Photos

The Secret Doorway
The Secret Doorway

The building process for The Secret Doorway from the Series: Outside Looking In.

26 Photos

———————————————————————————————————————-

for inquiries, questions and more images of the pieces mail me here

 

end of

————–Outside Looking In————–

Outside Looking In

Loved Outside Looking In but I want to visit other Visual Arts or go back to the Home Page

Kun Gantl Xunts

By On · Add Comment · In Painting

The Orca as a Symbol

The Orca as a Symbol

My love for native or ancient artistic design and architecture, as is evident in the piece Kun Gantl Xunts has been long withstanding, having taken me down some interesting avenues of experimentation with artistic applications, symbolism, lettering, forms of writing, and pictogram design. For Kun Gantl Xunts I was experimenting with these notions yet again. In many ways, through native arts as they are imbued in everyday items, with their deep connection to mythology, I have learned much of what I hold today to be atypical personal truths that are continually informing me artistically as influences that are now so rooted that extricating them would be all but impossible (and unnecessary). After experimenting with symbolism and cave painting in The First Wave series, and then with Japanese print painting style in The Golden Trees series, to mention a few of the extrapolations mentioned above, I decided that I wanted to try a more three-dimensional approach and interpret different genres of traditional art and different historical  epochs within one same series, which was later entitled Outside Looking In. And so Kun Gantl Xunts came to be.

Painting the Spirit

Painting the Spirit

With Kun Gantl Xunts (a 168cm by 150cm wooden piece composed of two layers of wood to give the notion of depth), the intent was to create the impression of looking at a Haida traditional log cabin and seeing a symbolic outside world within the door frame, in perfect accordance with the principal idea behind the concept for the series Outside Looking In; that within there is a world as vast as the one without, or outside. The wall was painted with a totemic symbol representing the Killer Whale and the inner world painted in the style of  The Golden Trees series, featuring a Killer Whale in the Ocean.

 

Kun Gantl Xunts

Kun Gantl Xunts

 

The title Kun Gantl Xunts, or to be more correct: Kún Gántl Xútns, is Haida for Whale, Water and Wolf, which is the Haida name for Killer Whale, so the English translation for the piece would be just that: Whale, Water & Wolf.

The following Haida legend  tells of the Origin of the Orca (Killer Whale) and will help illustrate why I chose this title for the piece:

“Once a man found two wolf pups on the beach, he took them to his home and raised them. When the pups had grown, they would swim out in to the ocean, kill a whale, and bring it to shore for the man to eat. Each day they did this, soon there was too much meat to eat and it began to spoil. When the Great Above Person saw this waste he made a fog and the wolves could not find whales to kill nor find they way back to shore. They had to remain at sea, those wolves became sea wolves (Orca).”

 

Behind Kun Gantl Xunts

 

Sketching the Orca

The notion behind this piece is that all animals have the characteristic attributes and strengths which can be translated into human like-traits.

This is a common belief between most indigenous people of the earth that goes back to the dawn of time for mankind, and is a idea precursor to early animist religions and ancient mythology.

The formidable might in nature of the Orcas due to their intelligence, cunning, ferociousness and predatory activities, is the symbolic imprint I was aiming to put in this piece.

 

 

Sketching the Tree

Sketching the Tree

The Tree, the Orca and the Ocean

The Tree, the Orca and the Ocean

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

———————————-that’s it for———————————-

Kun Gantl Xunts

(Kún Gántl Xúnts)

Owl ManLet’s go home

The First Wave

By On · Add Comment · In Painting, The First Wave, Visual Arts

Painted between 2008 and 2009, The First Wave series of paintings is based on the book: The Daemon.
This series focuses on ancient landscapes and cave-wall iconography, as were put down by the old peoples of Guanjama during the prehistoric age.

Get Adobe Flash player

The First Wave series was displayed in exhibit during 2008 and 2009, having been retired from exhibition rotation towards the end of 2009 when the series The Golden Trees was begun. The First Wave reappeared in 2011 for a massive art&music live exhibition at the LX Factory in Lisbon entitled: the XL experience @ the XL factory.

  • October 2008: IPJ, Lisbon, Portugal
  • November 2008: Braço de Prata, Lisbon Portugal,
  • January 2009: Fábrica da Pólvora, Oeiras, Portugal,
  • May 2009: NH Hoteis, Lisbon, Portugal
  • June 2009: Fundação Sousa Pedro, Lisbon, Portugal
  • March/April 2011: LX Factory, Lisbon, Portugal

 

The First Wave: the Inside Story


Although this series of paintings were based on the book: The Daemon, the story itself was based on another story; not one in the fashion of ancient cultures and spiritual traditions, but one following an entirely different concept altogether.

The inspiration for The First Wave is in reality a precursor to the story itself, as it is based on the philosophies and mind-set of the peoples that ‘own’ the myths that ‘feed’ the book..

The attempt is to put these notions in context and emulate the cave paintings and carvings that are the evidence from which, after thorough investigation, the myths and stories for The Daemon have been finally compiled.

These are the engravings found in the caves of Dab-Shi, in the estuary of Guanjama. The caves were the homes first to the tribes of cave-dwellers, and later to the shamans and ascetics of posterior cultures. All, without exception left their mark in the walls, mostly in reference to the myth of How the Earth Became a Mother, which went on to become the inspiration of the following series of paintings: The Golden Trees. It is part of a World-View that has long since disappeared from the mainstream but still lingers behind the scenes, bringing poetry to the lives of the few who embrace it.

It was believed in this region on Dab-Shi, in Guanjama, that within all living beings resided a mind divided into three filters of experience, called “The Three Bodies”, and a fourth external factor they named “The Ghost”.

“The Ghost” was the name given to all living external influences, be they visible or not, that could affect one’s behaviour. It referred to the influence of all kinds of Spirits, without discriminating between Gods, Guardian Angels and Elementals, as well as Independent Energies, whether positive or negative in force.

The “Middle Body” signified Consciousness, or the “I”. All that was part of an association between the sense and the lived present was of this world, of the “Middle Body”, only subsequently being transferred and stored to the “Lower Body”, and with time completely disappearing in the depths of the Self. This was a world ruled by emotions and the processes of logic. The element of “Fire” was associated to the “Middle Body”.

The “Lower Body” was the repository of all experience and acquired information. There was no time there, only the eternal present. It was a Body, or dense state, with no tangible definition; and of difficult access beyond the superficial contact with memories and their associated sensations attributed by the “Middle Body”.
However, it was there, in the depths of the “Lower Body” that the final illumination could take place, in a simultaneous playing and burning of all moments lived in an ultimate epiphany. The “Lower Body” was ruled by the Earth element.

The “Higher Body” was white, neutral, and pure. Here resided the Immortality of Being, and the Ultimate Reality. This was a state which was always present, and always hidden, colouring every aspect of life in the “Middle Body”, yet who’s realization was untouchable until attainment of the illumination of the “Lower Body”. The attributed Element to the “Higher Body” was Air.

 

The First Wave: the Underlying Flair

 

The undefined abstract world is appealing to work in, for it allows total freedom from concept and form in the act, and lets the work emerge intuitively, almost unconsciously. The improvisational character of working in this field is liberating to say the least, and one can truly let the story tell itself, relegating his own position from that of a commanding creator to that of an active observer, performing the act of creation in a sort of magical hypnosis or trance while still maintaining lucidity and critic abilities.

There is something to be said about repetitious actions as well. To have a huge wall in front of you and ‘touching’ it, colouring it, mindlessly wandering along the surface forever changing what it is and represents with our tracks is something quite warming.

The root of this work is steeped in symbolism and so it as appropriate that the technique follows the same trend:

sym·bol (n).

Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.

And so it is…

end of

————–The First Wave————–

The First Wave

Loved The First Wave but I want to visit other Visual Arts or go back to the Home Page