My interest in creating arises from memories and the need to recreate them. It amuses me to create fantasy worlds in which imaginary characters interact. With coloring pencils and felt-tip pens I scribbled all over my dad’s books and the old encyclopedias which had belonged to his father (my grandfather), and which I now treasure, since that’s where my fascination for the animal kingdom was born. They were probably the first images I ever saw of a tiger, a rhinoceros, or a toucan. Back then I did not know what they were, but that is when I started on this path of learning and studying which I follow with increased attention day by day.

The leading figure of my father and his interest in nature lingered around my own interest in creating and this became a mixture of elements nurturing my first steps. On weekends I would go with him to his aviary; he bred an average of 200 canaries, goldfinches and

greenfinches per year, it was incredible. When I walked into that space, it was as if I stopped belonging to the outside world and I had become one with them, it really thrilled me. Then I would go home and draw them, and from there, I would generate hybrids of birds with other animals.

That’s how it all started. I never thought any of that would take me anywhere, and I suspect that may be the very thing that has brought me all the way here. I draw and paint because it’s my way of life, because it is something I need to do to feel that I am myself, and because I have felt like that, ever since then. Combining my personal interests, art and nature, is the foundation of my work now, as it was in my childhood. There is nothing that makes me prouder. When what you do and make is true, you show yourself as you are and with work and perseverance that will rarely turn out badly.

The studio and streets provide me with different but necessary experiences. In mural painting, the street is a temporary space for art, an ephemeral place of traffic. It requires a spontaneity that the study compensates with a methodical approach, where works with a specific purpose are generated; its duration over time. The street is exposed to much more different and harder conditions to have under control. In the studio, the space is easily (and comfortably) controlled, though. That is the reason why I might like it more and more.

Nevertheless, there is a part of me that needs the street in order to feel free, a wilder side that was born from my

beginnings in painting walls. It may no longer has the intensity of then, but it still allows me to improve myself, grow and learn just like I do in the studio. Working with large scales allows me to test myself and see how far I can go. I definitely love that.

I need harmony between both worlds, as if it were a weighing scale. Complementary and reciprocal, both work together and come together to form myself as an “artist”, despite of the fact that I refuse being called like that, since my work is an extension of my person.