Friday, June 24, 2016

Summer time stories and a new linocut "Afternoon walk" is available now

"Liberación del deseo" by Paco Juan Déniz at Centro de Artes Plásticas, 
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria can be seing until 22 July.

Yesterday I went to see a photography exhibition at Museo Casa de Colon in Vegueta area. When I arrived there, at the reception, they told me there was fumigation going on in the building, so the galleries were closed. It is very absurd if you think about it, why they have to do this job in the middle of a week day and visiting hours? At least, It was not the last day of the exhibition, not a total disaster but I had to come back another day. Anyways, I knew another place, not very far from there, just around the corner called Centro de Artes Plásticas which belongs to Cabildo Insular (run by the island council). I decided to give a chance to this little art gallery and actually at this time, I was surprised and quite happy with the visit. 

At the gallery, I went through the exhibition catalog to know about the artist Paco Juan Déniz. I learnt that he was born in 1956 in La Vega de San Mateo, Gran Canaria. He is a self-thought artist with many years of experiences and he has done numerous exhibitions through his career.

At the exhibition there were many artworks from different years and periods of his artistic journey. In his early works, he used monotone oil colors experimenting the abstract forms to convert figures, which was interesting to spend some time and get lost inside of these paintings. The other artworks were also very curious, such as neat color pencil drawings and acrylic paintings with many figures, objects as symbols (see pic below). Lovely creations truly, you could tell he got influenced by surrealism, symbolism and mediaeval art. It was a good discovery for me to know about another talented local artist.

Enjoying the color pencil drawings

This week I worked on a small linocut project. It has been quite hot these days, so I felt like creating the composition with a girl and her dog by the coast of our neighborhood El Burrero (see pics below). This neighborhood has strong wind and nice breeze this season. Whenever we visit there we come back home refreshed and now whenever I look at this linocut print I feel much better in this hot summer day. The handmade linocut print is numbered and signed by me and printed only 25 editions. Now it's available at my online showroom ClickGallery. You can click on SHOP to see the details. Have a great weekend!

Ready to print

Work in progress

"Afternoon walk" by Birsen Ozbilge, 2016
Original limited edition handmade linocut print
(Edition of 25 only)
Paper size 6.5" x 7.5" (16.5 x 19 cm.)
Image size 3.8" x 4.75" (9.75 x 12 cm.)
Available, click on SHOP


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Saturday, June 18, 2016

Another Canarian Artist to admire and My Mother's Portrait to enjoy

José Jorge Oramas (Canarian painter, 1911-1934) 

Recently I visited a collective exhibition titled "Esenciales" at Museo San Martín, consisting of small formatted artworks by Canarian and foreign artists from different generations. The collection belongs to CAAM, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. I was curious about it and it was good for me to see who from my generation was in this collection. Unfortunately, I did not like many artworks from the new generation. My favorite one from the whole collection was a landscape painting by José Jorge Oramas (1911-1934) (see pic below). Later on at home I read his very short and sad life story (see pic above). He became an orphan child soon after he was born, and his grandmother and his aunt raised him. At a very early age he started to work at a barber shop. He had interest on drawing and painting. He was very talented, so he went to study art education at Escuela de Lujan Perez in Gran Canaria. He participated in a few collective exhibitions and had only one solo exhibition. At the age of 24 he died from tuberculosis. In this very short lifetime period he painted close to 100 artworks; Portraits of his friends, many landscape paintings of a colorful neighborhood, Canarian scenes with local people and more...

Enjoying a painting by Jorge Oramas

If you follow me on social networks, you may have seen me working on a small oil painting portrait project these days. I was painting my mother's portrait from a reference photo image (see pic below) along with her budgie parrot that she used to have. She doesn't know about her portrait painting yet and I am sure she will be very happy when she sees it.  

 work in progress


Painting is drying in the display rack

 "Semos and Boncuk" by Birsen Ozbilge, oil on canvas sheet
29,5 x 30 cm. (11,5" x 11,75")


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