Storytelling: An interview with New York-based artist Victor-Raul Garcia

HIGH END WEEKLY™: What are your working process, the materials, and techniques that you use?     

VICTOR-RAUL GARCIA: I have to be in a good mood to work. There is no other way for me. Once the mood is confirmed, I first rifle through loads of visual stimuli for inspiration, such as editorial photography, antique portraits, club kid wear, etc. Next, I choose colors, whether it be acrylics, spray paint, or oil pastels. Then tools… the fun part! I mostly use palette knives, contractor tools, and squeegees, but I have also used swimming pool noodles, mops, and large drafting rulers. Finally comes the painting part. With iPod on full blast, I grab a tool in each hand and start doing backgrounds with fast and thick sweeps and mix colors as I’m doing that. Afterward, the painting tells me where to go, and that’s the last thing I remember. It’s true. Something leads my hand, and I get lost in the zone until the painting tells me it’s done. By the way, I never use a paintbrush (only for dotting “I’s” and crossing “T’s”!).

HIGH END WEEKLY™: Please share your thoughts about your color choices when it comes to your work.

VICTOR-RAUL GARCIA: Bold and vivid colors are the driving force to my color compulsion. Personally speaking, there is no better way to express passion, fury, delight, and confusion. There is no better rush than the release of dopamine while you create characters and personalities in color. We are all made up of powerful energy and a color spectrum of light, so I must consider those intensities when I give my paintings life.

HIGH END WEEKLY™: When you see an abstract work, whether it be landscapes or portraits, what speaks to you the most?                                                                                                                                  

VICTOR-RAUL GARCIA: I would say the subject matter and balance. Whether explicit or implicit, I enjoy taking the work in as a whole objectively and then zooming in subjectively for this story’s source and underlying details. As for balance, I favor works that make sense and order out of chaos.

HIGH END WEEKLY™: Can you share some examples of the great masters of the past and how they inspired your artwork today?

VICTOR-RAUL GARCIA: Robert Rauschenberg, John Chamberlain, and Gilbert & George. The first is his understanding of the human condition and telling a story based on the complex layers of our thought processes, puzzle-solving and social conscience. Secondly, Mister Chamberlain literally bends reality and does so while taking recycling to the next level; each sculpture is a personality of its own. Finally, Gilbert & George – the dynamic duo’s firework display of color sets the tone on how storytelling can change our lives.

HIGH END WEEKLY™: Why do you think more and more people are collecting art, specifically abstract art, for their homes and as an investment for the future?                                                              

VICTOR-RAUL GARCIA: I will answer this question on my own reasons for painting abstractly. My childhood was very violent and menacing. I needed to escape the reality I was dealt with, find safety, hope, and a defense mechanism. I would scribble hard and wildly as a silent roar. Today I don’t have that anger or sense of trauma. BUT painting is still an outlet for me to express my multilayered self. So back to the question, I believe people need that same sort of emotional release with visual stimuli since nothing is static anymore. When Kandinsky pioneered abstract painting over a century ago, it observed how people felt during the dawn of modern technology. Fast forward now, and we are on system overdrive. We are bombarded with information, fast deadlines, and quotas and produce, produce, produce. Most people favor abstract art over representational art because it taps into their emotional time bombs, and they can see everything they feel. I believe abstract art makes a personal connection and justification for the viewer for all that is non-physical in their day-to-day lives while being transported to another reality.

HIGH END WEEKLY™: Which of the pieces in your latest body of work are you most proud of?

VICTOR-RAUL GARCIA: This will sound like a total contradiction after having confessed to my obsession with color, but I would have to say my large-scale black/white painting titled “Come out, Come out, Wherever you are” from the summer of 2020. It depicts a god-like creature wreaking havoc with floods and storms, leaving one structure intact. This leviathan represents all the unknown, the invisible, and the intangible that the pandemic was and still is for us. Personally, the pandemic triggered many a term from my former Catholic faith, such as plague, punishment, judgment, firstborn, personal demons, etc. The house left standing represents the force field in which I surround myself daily to deflect doubts, fears, thoughts of helplessness, and bad neighborhoods in my mind. While the pandemic has battered me emotionally and psychologically, in the end, my hope, resilience, and need for an appreciation of the simpler things in life was reinvigorated.