Juan Álvarez Cebrián

Blue railing

2018

This painting captures the serenity and vastness of the Mataleñas landscape in Santander. From a balcony, the view opens toward a cliff, where a construction post in the foreground h...

This work depicts a serene landscape of the Tablas de Daimiel, (Ciudad Real, Spain) a unique and UNESCO protected wetland, known for being an important passage point for migratory bi...

The work Blue Chapitel, explores the relationship between architecture and color, highlighting an architectural fragment: the column and the capital. The work uses in this case a gre...

This artwork captures a view of Camel Beach, located in the city of Santander. The piece conveys the serenity and constant movement of the Cantabrian Sea, where the waves gently end ...

acrylic on canvas

Realistic seascape :: Painting :: Realism :: This piece comes with an official certificate of authenticity signed by the artist :: Ready to Hang: Yes :: Signed: Yes :: Signature Loca...

"In the series “This is a real place!” I was fascinated by how the underside of the pier at Saint Simons Island, GA was like a readymade collage. The way the pilings and rails divide and frame the spaces between them looks artificially imposed on the scene until you notice the way the waves bounce off the pilings and the railings cast shadows on the water. In some iterations, I chose to simplify the structures of the pier and lighten the values so that it would emphasize the detail in the water. Likewise, I omitted a family of starlings and their droppings in favor of highlighting the geometry of the architecture and the colors and patterns of the water. Making paintings in a series allows me to investigate the results of making different decisions about an image. How I crop or stylize it, the manner in which I apply the paint, what gets included or excluded all add shades of meaning to each piece. Additionally, depictions of the same subject in different weather, seasons, times of day, and tides allows me a deeper understanding. I notice more relationships, colors, and details every time I paint the subject. Every painting is a pile of decisions. Playing with removing more and more details to see what is truly important sometimes improves the painting. The fewer elements you include in an image, the more each one means, and the more important it is to get each thing perfect. At times I like to paint every single detail I can find in a scene, and other times I feel like the unadorned components are sufficient to hold each other in a satisfying composition. I often add simplified shapes to my paintings to highlight the presence of absence or to heighten the importance of each area by creating stark visual contrasts. ⁠The physicality of the paint also plays a role. I used highly textured, thickly applied paint to construct the solid structural elements, and luminous layers of thinly glazed paint for the delicate linework and subtle blending of the water." - Brooke Lanier...