“Painting is the fastest way of reaching the soul”

“For me, painting is the fastest way of reaching the soul. As in poetry, a painting has to be either a gut rejection or love at first sight, but it has to be very swift”, says Ramón Enrich, who as a child enjoyed playing the piano, climbing trees, observing the behaviour of ants or lighting matches, “actions with a hint of the forbidden about them for children, because they give you a different vision of the world”.

Clambering up to the treetops, hiding and seeing what happened was one of his greatest pastimes. “Lots of my paintings reflect what I saw as a child because they are aerial views. When you’re up a little higher than things you understand them better, as though you some kind of command of the world. It’s like stepping back from a problem in order to try and get a grasp of it and understand it”.

Ramón enrolled in Law and Architecture, but in the end he decided to study Fine Arts. “I painted, I drew, I messed up pieces of paper and even though it was my vocation, it scared me. Going for your vocation is always complicated, above all because if you take one path you close the door to others. And more so in the visual arts, where as well as doing a good job, you need luck”.

After being awarded a scholarship in Paris, and then another in the United States, he decided to go and meet his idols: “I learned more from them than from lectures at university”. One fine day he packed his bags and set off to learn from great artists like Donald Judd, Julian Schnabel or David Hockney.

When he finished his training, he decided to devote himself to painting and exhibiting his works. “Ultimately, painting is talking about yourself. It’s a life confession. I am inspired by the architects and designers who straddle the realms of both madness and reason. It’s the type of art that doesn’t provoke, but rather reflects on the harmonies of pure beauty and emotion. And I do it with architecture, landscape and human stupidity”.

In order to not lose that fresh quality, or energy, Enrich feels “it is important to wear your heart on your sleeve, like when you were a child, otherwise what you have is the beginning of decadence. With so many information overdoses, you have to search in different strata. It’s harder and harder to surprise with a painting because on TV, you have everything you need on the screen. It’s extremely difficult to fight against spectacularity, the only possible tool is the force of the soul, and that is what I try to achieve every time I confront a canvas”.

Sometimes, in his opinion, “you don’t get emotional with just one painting, but you do with an exhibition. Playing with mystery is defining in an artist. And more so in painting, because the canvas should never be concluded by the painter, but by the person seeing it. The painter should insinuate”.

Enrich claims that “my painting is inexact in the sense that it is theatrical and disorderly, with the pretence of being ordered. My studio is a chaos of images, but when I create a painting I try to make everything logical. It’s like a frustration that I express, which acquires depth because it’s an obsession”, he says.

“When I create a painting it’s a [...]

--------

Read this article in full in IN PALMA 71. And if you like, subscribe to IN PALMA for 1 year and get the next 4 issues of the magazine delivered to your home.