Still life is a genre that has been with us for thousand of years and has evolved considerable. It is a subject very dear to me. I started painting still lifes since my college days and always felt very connected to it. I don’t paint this subject as often as I used to but when I do feels very special. With that note I’m sharing this new series of artworks called Black Bottle. I aim at simplifying shapes putting more emphasis on basic composition elements rather than details and being precise at depicting objects.
A place where reality meets fantasy and fantasy meets reality. Unconscious desires, playfulness and encounters with other living beings.
She is strolling about and after a slight trip has fallen not knowing what to do next and finds herself in a striking pose.
Olivia is a semi-abstract figure in a more abstract landscape. This is a square mid-size (34 x 32 inches) oil painting on a stretched canvas titled “Fallen Olivia.” A pleasing muted palette of analogous blues and greens dominate this piece. Canvas is stretched on wooden strips and is ready for framing or to be displayed as is. This painting is signed ‘cherres’ in the lower left corner.
I am constantly fascinated with stripes. When it calls I often find a way to include them in my paintings. This one is obvious, but in landscapes they’re kind of hidden. Stripes are everywhere, in notepads, wallpapers, clothing, logos, book covers, bottles of wine and of course in nature.
I made this painting some time ago when I used to paint more figuratively, but I gotta say, I’m kind of itching to paint like this again. It’s all cycles, just like life. We’ll see where this path takes me.
Although some of the paintings from this series look obvious, I was inspired to depict that feeling we sometimes get as if we were floating in space. My ideas somehow reflect our daily life, our difficulties, struggles, complications, decision making; always questioning our own existence.
What is gravity? We were all thought in school it is a force emanated from the center of the earth to keep us and everything else from floating into space.
I’m sure you know Diego Velazquez, an impressive Spanish artist from the 17th century, if you don’t I’ll talk a bit about him in a future post. Today I want to focus on his famous painting Las Meninas, which lives at El Prado museum in Madrid, Spain.
This colossal masterpiece (125 x 105 in) was commissioned by the king Phillip IV. There are many versions of what Velazquez was depicting, it looks like a mundane day at the royal palace where the infanta Margaret Theresa is being tended by her maids. If you look at the left hand side you see Velazquez painting the scene on this gigantic canvas looking at us. If he is looking at us, that means he was probably painting from a mirror or at least give us that impression. If you look even closer at Velazquez right hand side you’ll notice a small picture of two people on the wall, they are the king and queen reflected on a mirror. If this is the case he would’ve been portraying them on that large canvas? So the viewers would be the king and queen, which are reflected on the mirror, instead of us. Or is this a self-portrait including the royal family. Not to mention the small figure exiting the door, intriguing. Another version is that he was painting a double portrait of the king and queen and the king called his daughter to entertain them while they were being portrayed and Velazquez adjusted the portrait and made it a whole scene, if this is the case he would’ve been given extremely flexibility to make this painting bu the king.
There are many versions about this painting’s meaning, but there is no doubt he was a genius to create a scene based on the king’s requests and what was going on at that moment. I hope you enjoyed this short art story.
One of the first ones of the series. As of 2025 Horizons is my current artistic evolution ever since I started exploring landscapes, which I was doing in an indirect way. My compositions usually had landscapes backstage behind people and portraits. When I decided to omit figures, landscapes took over the main role and started to evolve.
Horizons explores imagined, fantastical scenes. In this body of work, I challenge reality, questioning the hows and whys using art as a means of escape from everyday life. Horizons is one of my longest-running series to date, and it continues to evolve with each new piece.
Emotion, reflection, a sense of calm or maybe something else? Perhaps all of them? These are some of the experiences I felt when I painted this one. It might be one of the most abstract pieces I have made with hints of shapes and objects. Some of the original ideas I had were flowers and faces, which evolved into something else, but the essence is there. At the end it veered into a dreamy night scene including a figure, can you see it?
This series is about our relentless search for something in our lives, whether tangible or not. Although the painting is very literal with this woman reaching for a mushroom in rather an uncomfortable position, it is metaphorically describing deeper meaning. It could well be us looking for answers to life’s deepest questions.
My website keeps evolving like everything else in life. After thinking for a while I decided to add many if not all of the series I have made over the years. Since I have many works, I’ll be doing this progressively.
I recently added two more series or collections (as they are called in my website.) They are called Another Place and Garden of Earthly Delights. These pieces are figurative, a different genre from the semi-abstract landscapes I have been making lately. If you pay close attention you’ll see the evolution that led me to my current series Horizons.
Oh and by the way, you might also notice I have completely revamped my website, it’s a little cleaner and easier to browse. Feel free to let me know if you have any suggestions.
I’ve just added seven new paintings to my Canvas Editions, all in a square format—and I’m excited to also introduce five new sizes:
12 x 12 in (30 × 30 cm)
20 x 20 in (50× 50 cm)
30 x 30 in (80 × 80 cm)
40 x 40 in (100 × 100 cm)
48 x 48 in (120 × 120 cm)
These new pieces are part of my Horizons series, which draws inspiration from nature, dreams, everyday life, and imagined landscapes. It’s a series I started a few years ago and continue to evolve as my practice grows.
Each print is made on museum-quality canvas using archival pigment inks—built to last a lifetime—and comes stretched and ready to hang, with a choice of four hand-selected wood frame colors.
I hope you enjoy these new additions as much as I enjoyed creating them.
