I.AM.AN.ART.WORK
Felix Sala Martin is a Spanish man, he is 31 years old and comes from a small town whose name is Ondara in the province of Alicante. He was always talented to draw since he was young but he discovered his passion for the art, (especially with acrylic paint on canvas) when he was 23 years old. After a few years he decided to travel to London and start a new chapter in his life and get through into the art world.
The beginning was not easy for him, he was a hard worker as a waiter until he become supervisor in a restaurant during three years, later decided to step up and he started to work in the shard as well but finally he found a job in an art workshop in Shoreditch which he still working there until the current day. He is now almost 5 years old in London and he is a student of Fine Arts in the Metropolitan University in Aldgate and the creator of his own website and brand I·AM·AN·ART·WORK·.
He also has done a few exhibitions in some fair places like Parallax but he would like to have his own space someday to expose as many pieces as possible and show his art to the world.
Felix Sala Martin uses black and white paint on canvas, he likes to use patterns as: triangles, squares or whatever random form that he thinks is convertible in pattern. The theme has not a straight path in his paintings because he likes to represent: landscapes, people, animals, objects, shapes in his own style but with that touch of magical sense that comes from the unconscious.
His art is a window to another world where the figures, textures, volumes, shapes are mixed creating an amazing soft psychedelic environment.
He also likes to play with the viewer and he likes to hide characters between the patterns, that gives the viewer the sense of a mental game and he gives them an extra incentive to watch besides the attractive of the design.
A curious thing about him is he signs the paintings with a strong red color giving a delicate but unusual touch to the pieces of art.
Interview:
1. What got you started in your journey to become an artist? Do you remember the initial spark of inspiration? My journey as an artist started in 2015 when one boring day I started to paint a black and white canvas just for a friend and the result impacted us. Today my best friend still has that painting.
2. What are some of the greatest or most persistent hurdles you have faced as an artist so far? The creation of my own website is totally a nightmare, I am still not capable of building and understanding how to develop my website and I still need someone that can help me with it.
3. What is your chosen medium to work in and why do you choose this over all the other potential mediums? Painting, even though I like all the rest of the mediums, painting increases my potential imagination and the way I express through the paint makes me feel better.
4. What drives your art, what are some of the motivations which are at the root of this creativity? In my case I am capable of seeing the world in these patterns and It is something that I need to express and show to the world, a vision of a world.
5. Why do you choose to paint, draw or represent the subject matter that you do, in your artwork? When I have a vision of something I split the space and the image in tiny pieces, so to represent that vision, paint is the best way to express it because I can paint in small patterns until it reveals the full image.
6. In the past 2 to 3 years, in what ways have you seen your artwork improving? To be honest I have no favorite artist but I always thought to be part of a group of artists, create a team together, take care of each other like for example in the surrealism movement where Rene Magritte and Andre Breton had a community and spend the time together making art en all the ways possible as a poetry, paintings or whatever. I think those days were quite interesting in terms of community of artists, this neoliberalism that we live in the current day makes the artist more individualists.
7. Who is you biggest artistic inspiration? who is the artist you hope to emulate, meet or replicate in terms of their art or career? To be honest I have no favorite artist but I always thought to be part of a group of artists, create a team together, take care of each other like for example in the surrealism movement where Rene Magritte and Andre Breton had a community and spend the time together making art en all the ways possible as a poetry, paintings or whatever. I think those days were quite interesting in terms of community of artists, this neoliberalism that we live in the current day makes the artist more individualists.
8. What are you working towards as an artist? Are you looking for more recognition in the form of sales or gallery representation? I am a person that is learning continually and I just started but I guess I expect more recognition in terms of sales during this year.
9. Do you do commissions or offer bespoke work for clients such as murals? if so or not, why? Yes, definitely, in fact, I already did some work for people and I have a waiting list at the moment for further paintings with specific clients.
10. If you had advice for novice artists in 2023 or just other artists in general, what would that be? Be as much as possible honest with you and be clear with your art style and smashed, be the best one on what you know to do. Be the boss of your style and forget about the rest of the people. Painting realism does not make you a better artist, that is just another technique more but being different and improving that difference in my opinion is going to make you live off your art.
