GENTLE WOMEN
In watercolor, water covers color but discovering it, spreads it.
Water takes on the form of the color that spreads it. Water carries
color, and color, light. While light shows us forms, form alone shows
us shadows. Between one and the other there is water in color, which
is in light. There, the lightness of water is the measure of its form,
the thinness, the texture.
Within the varied inventiveness the painter has to relate to those
elements, Apaza seeks the other color of color, the restlessness of
movement, what floats within the rooted. Water with its hands that
seek form, color, its eyes that seek the limit, the boundaries. Light
is projected becoming matter, creating images, riverbed through which
intuition splits and adds soul to what is found.
In the ensemble RAZA, Apaza shows a world that looks at the world,
its characters are not exhibited, they are beings who look at us from
the paper. They watch people from their quiet integrity.
Apaza, peruvian watercolor artist, in contrast with his contemporaries,
sees an opportunity of greatness in each composition. The gentleness
of regional and indigenous life, is translated into an attitude of
prayer and of facing its reality, its era. His characters' attitude
is symbolic in that they are the ones who look at us. Hence, the quiet
gentleness might be nothing less than the greatness of their race,
the purity in relation to nature.
In DAWN, NIGHT OF CANDLES, COUPLE and STREET, women are shown clothed,
always at rest, still, intact. Almost always beside a candle, waiting,
walking but at the same time void of movement. Why the need to show
them with candles and in a waiting pose? What's the wait? The flame
lights the colors or brings out color? I think the candles represent
the company of the world. Indigenous people light candles not to see,
but to be in company so that in seeing them feel present. Hence the
solace between two solitudes, Flame alone, I am alone, from Tzara.
That's how dialogue is born between contemplations, the candle looks
at the person, the person at the world. The candle is not for seeing
beyond, rather for seeing what is not lit, what is beyond the candle,
myself, the world.
In the work DAWN, a girl is seen as if she were a tree trunk, surrounded
by candles. An intention to live two realities. A girl in perspective
suggesting greatness through the magnitude of its trunk. Candles like
trees and trees like candles. The tree —Vigenére might
say— in similar way as the candle with its roots linked to the
earth from which it draws its sustenance, the string does the same
with the fat, wax or oil, that allow it to burn. The stem of the tree
that sucks the juice or sap, is the same as the torch whose fire is
maintained by the alcohol that draws itself and the white flames are
branches dressed in leaves flowers and fruit towards what finally
tends the tree. It's all reduced to the same white flame. In this
comparison the tree is the girl who draws from the world, the sap
and at the same time lights her presence in life. The more Apaza joins
these realities, the closer he'll be to represent, not the attitude
of a woman, but the transcendence of a race close to nature.
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