Artospective: Batik Paintings by Rafael López Baz.

The nobodies - Tribute to Eduardo Galeano and Goya

An Interview with Rafael López Baz.

Who and where are you from?

I am Rafael López Baz, born in Uruguay and have been living in Gran Canaria, Spain for the past 16 years.

What brought you to Art?

A great cultural explosion was experienced in my country, Uruguay, at the end of the dictatorship. Brutally and beautifully impacted my quest for expression at the early age of 10. First came theater, then at 16, music and painting using batik as the underlying technique. And I have been walking this path since then.

What is your driving force?

Chaos. To try to sort out the confusion and the unpredictable from the truth that lays underneath. To find a way to express feelings and emotions that arise in that awareness of chaos, then find the point of relax and return to chaos with a different perspective.

What kind of work you do and why?

Painting with wax and dyes is definitely not conventional or popular in artworks, but is certainly a fascinating and challenging medium. The beauty of batik is that it requires careful planning and visualization of the final work before you even start, as there is no step back once a layer of dye has been applied. It requires lots of patience and time. Also, it requires absolute trust, as you never really know the result until the very final step, when the wax is removed. With other techniques, you can paint and repaint, correct errors, go back. Batik asks you to be very present. There is only one opportunity to color each part of the fabric. Mistakes become opportunities for change. Each step in the process is fascinating for the risk and discovery it entails.

Tell us more about your thought process.

The hallmark of batik painting is cracking, which is attained braking the wax layer and letting the pigments seep into the cracks. This idea attracts me strongly. From matter to feeling, there is almost nothing that does not crack and does not let the true colors find their way.