Pilar Lopez Baez, paintings of childhood memories

STATEMENT
I am very interested in memory. Our memories are our identity, but it is not an organized archive. Many memories disappear, we forget them little by little, some others are our unconscious inventions. Even society influences on our memories and we censor them consciously or unconsciously. The memory is individual and collective.

My paintings are a reflection on memory, identity and oblivion. I hope my artworks awake the memories of the viewer. So that, I paint everyday situations. I choose important life moments such as childhood or Christmas holidays. Children are the protagonists of my paintings doing things such as run, play or interact with each other, meanwhile in other times, they seem to be lost in their own thoughts as if they were adults.

I am looking for the empathy of the viewer and therefore my paintings are realistic. But realism is not something photographic. The mixed technique allows me to explore new types of representation. Oil, charcoal, collage and more. When the papers of the collage have images, their content may be not symbolic. The three-dimensional realism coexists with abstract representation. For example, human figures seem to be about to appear or disappear. My paintings try to show the difficulty of remembering and the inevitable oblivion.
Pilar Lopez Baez
Nov 4, 2017