A chat with Pablo

Talking about personal influences in plastic work is part of understanding the context in which our training as artists is developed; this leads me to the great fortune of receiving in my study the visit of Pablo Castañeda, who is, without a doubt, one of the most influential exponents of the last years in Baja California and Northeast Mexico.

Our talk was pleasant and the evolution of that evening very enriching; we talked from the importance of opting out for certain color palette, to the various forms of using black color without recurring to it directly from the paint tube; as well as the development of imagination as a constant active in painting.

One of the topics Pablo Castañeda shared was about his way of approaching the responsibility of defining himself as plastic artist and working in diverse tasks that ranged from sketching, oil and acrylic painting, participating in expositions, as well as a true tree of activities that demanded discipline, which provided solid support to his work.

Curiously, the most elastic topic, even more than the laws of offer and demand, was to ‘value’ the artist’s work, how much should a piece cost? A very complicated task, which finds great part of its validation in arguments such as validity, prestige, making a solid public relations exercise to be in the public, art galleries, and collectors radar, as well as an unending amount of variables and spreading spaces that must be occupied permanently to not lose validity.

As the last topic, we talked about the importance of the ‘piece content’. Pablo Castañeda was very clear when stating:

‘When painting, you must connect your emotions with plastic expression’; which I understand as an invitation to reflect in order to open new possibilities that allow us to enrich our emotions, each of our paintings’.

In a second reflection, he added: ‘In addition to doing it in a simple way’; after hearing this, I could only understand that I must face the great task of commit to the dialog that painting offers us, and always procure to share our dialog in the most sincere way.

The great opportunity of knowing more about Pablo Castañeda’s work allowed me to distinguish, among other things, his human warmness, as well as his great technique, plastic proposal in constant definition, and an energy so special that provides us with the great opportunity of knowing your voice through art.