Javier Gonzalez Pacheco is a talented modern artist living in Barcelona, Spain. Although his finished art works are produced digitally, Pacheco spends a lot of time drawing, sketching and painting in a series of moleskine notebooks, preparing the foundations for his art works. From paper to screen, Pacheco’s designs retain their hand-created style. Using image manipulation programs like Photoshop, Pacheco gives his art works an extra dimension by digitally tweaking the images. The result is a mixed media style that is unique to this artist.
The finished image retains its drawn, sketched or painted essence while boasting digital design elements such as parts of the design breaking off and floating off into the space around it; dissipating as the viewer absorbs the image. Some designs seem to be in the process of exploding into thousands of tiny pieces, whereas others appear to have only one aspect that floats away, as if magnetically attracted to some unseen force within the image. The dissipation of the designs give balance to the creativity of the art work, measuring destruction against its counterpart; creation. Pacheco’s paintings are a visual conundrum, appearing before the viewer while simultaneously breaking apart and disappearing. There is a sense that the subjects of the paintings are broken in some way, and are in the process of being scattered to the winds. The subjects themselves seem oblivious to this destruction, staring out at the viewer with an expression of calm confidence that belies the destruction taking place within them.
Pacheco’s color palette is mostly made up of natural color tones, offset by a contrasting color. This sense of conflicting states is also apparent in his use of shapes and lines. Organic curves created by the forms of the living subjects are offset with sharp, geometric shapes as the design breaks into pieces. There is a sense of both beauty and violence in Pacheco’s works, of movement and stillness; as though the figure in the art work were experiencing their very own Big Bang, and the artist captured the moment of implosion in a single image.
Visit Javier Gonzalez Pacheco’s online art gallery for more mixed media paintings and designs.