Although his role as profile art director can have you skulling tapas at 3 in the morning, the greatest creative flight of paul fear It doesn’t happen on those hectic early mornings. His most personal search occurs when he gives himself to the painting in his atelier, reinterpreting beloved landscapes or capturing some dreamed of. That’s the road that led him to the show “Urban Chronicles” at the Benito Quinquela Martín Museumin Mouth (until June 26), and that displays works carried out in the last seven years. The city you are referring to? Two ends of the American continent, New York and Buenos Airesunited by the affection of their gaze but also by their quality as port cities, with large European immigration, with clear light and corners to remember.
NEWS: How was the search for this seven-year production?
Paul Fears: I am a painter of places rather than people. It seems to me that the landscape is a very interesting pretext to express myself. It is more enriching than doing a classic nude or a nature. Landscape it is an excuse to get into painting. At the time of the fiercest pandemic, when we were all afraid to go out on the street, I would go to the terrace of my house and start painting images that I saw in the neighborhood. I don’t copy, I reinterpret, I order the chaos I see. I paint the feeling that the landscape gives me, which is a good alibi to begin with. I discovered New York in 1997, after which I returned several times for work and pleasure. As a city it struck me, especially the less ostentatious side, the most intimate at the height of man, those suburban neighborhoods of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. I like its shapes and light. And it seemed good to me to make a counterpoint with Buenos Aires.
NEWS: He reinterprets what he sees, then what does he learn about himself when he sees his works?
You fear: Any artist who prides himself on making his art from the heart is going to feel that things are changing inside him. He brings up themes from my childhood. He modifies me, there are paintings I painted eight or ten years ago and I take them up again now, because there is something I don’t like. I put the paintings that I am making at the foot of my bed, on a wall in front of me. So I go to bed and wake up looking at the painting, but the person who went to sleep is not the same as the one who gets up. The head changes, and somehow you take distance and you can be more critical.
NEWS: There is an obsession in this of never putting an end…
You fear: Yes of course. There is a painter who says that he does not finish the paintings, he abandons them. The first times in my life that I was able to sell were very painful, because it was difficult for me to let go. But the most important reward is not money, it is that there is someone who likes what you do. It is someone who wants the painting in his house and to see it every day. That is why the prices of art are expensive, because it is a unique piece in the universe. That energy that is in that fabric is irreproducible. We painters continue to use the same method of painting as 1,500 or 2,000 years ago: oil, brush, oil and a canvas. Bosch did that in the fifteenth century.
NEWS: Although now technology has also meddled in art, with NFTs…
You fear: There is a brutal paradigm shift with technology. So one thinks how to seduce a viewer with something that is still on a wall fighting with all the kinetics of the Internet, of audio, of movement, of networks. And I think that time is going to prove the reason for those of us who paint and those who write on paper, because that is unalterable. What happens is that society goes at 500 kilometers per hour and everything is ephemeral, liquid. It’s all rushed and fast, and that’s not right. And someone who assumes himself to be hyperkinetic tells you.
NEWS: Isn’t painting a retreat against that?
You fear: A little, it’s like a healing. A zen exercise to be able to connect. But the work that I do from the graphic and editorial side demands a lot of energy. Sometimes I’m designing covers at 3 in the morning.
NEWS: And how do you separate both worlds?
You fear: I’m pretty structured in my thinking, and I try not to mix things up too much. When I make caricatures or illustrations about a journalistic fact it is one, the one who paints a landscape is another. For some that is not right, they see it as something too zigzagging. I am a graduate of Fine Arts, and at school to say that you were an illustrator was sinful, like a minor art. But Toulouse-Lautrec made caricatures, Leonardo and Michelangelo too… Caricatures drive me crazy, especially politics. I have over 3000 made in NEWS alone. I am one and I am another, but I try to do both very honestly.
NEWS: Did prejudice cost you?
You fear: A little at the beginning. Back when she was 20, 21 years old. But at the end of the road, after almost 40 years of working on this, you realize that it’s not bad. Also, if I hadn’t ended up being a teacher, something I don’t like, especially because it takes a lot of energy out of you.
NEWS: What are your influences? A very clear in these landscapes and scenes is Edward Hopper.
You fear: Yes, what Hopper has is that silent painting magic. Anyone who doesn’t know anything about painting but has seen “The Nighthawks”, those four or five people in an American bar, understands what is being talked about. Many directors have drawn on Hopper’s aesthetic, there are Hitchcock scenes that are taken directly from there. He paints silence in some way, and I like that a lot. Because it’s like nothing happens there, but anything could happen. There is an atmosphere of dreaminess and surrealism and at the same time a great power of shapes and colors. They are like poetry. I could put my influences on a scale of how much they weigh, there are many… I think of Max Beckmann, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, and also Argentines like Pío Collivadino, Miguel Victorica, Juan Del Prete, one better than the other.
NEWS: Would you do a sample of cartoons?
You fear: Yes, I have ever done a group show. They also tell me to make one with the NEWS covers. The truth is that in all cases I try to be genuine and to surprise those who are on the other side of the magazine, the drawing and the painting.
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