Nicolás Sánchez AlfAlfA (born in Mérida, Venezuela, 1983) is a muralist that specializes in large size paintings and draftsman. He became interested in art at an early age, and later studied Plastic Arts at the University of Caracas. He also attended the National School of Fine Arts in Montevideo. However since 2008, he has focused on urban-street art, painting murals of different sizes. His work is based on researching fantasy as a shelter on mythology.
For the last nine years, he’s carried out a range of solo and group shows in Montevideo, among other Uruguayan cities. He’s traveled abroad for residencies, festivals, and art interventions, visiting different countries such as Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, USA, Germany, England, Poland, Spain, Austria, India, Bosnia, and Croatia. Nowadays, he lives and works as an independent artist in Montevideo.
Iryna Kanishcheva had an opportunity to interview the artist Nicolás Sánchez for SAUS.
Can you tell us about your beginnings as an artist? Do you have a formal education?
I feel as an artist since I was a child. Very early in my life I started drawing, grew up in a house of artists and my education was always focused in this direction. My motivation was always a fantasy, in my mind, I always have had creatures and the need to put them on a paper. Mythologies, allegories, fantastic creatures always fascinated me. Also, creation has been always my shelter, my space, keeps me always safe. I was a self-taught draftsman before I started studying. I spent 10 years in art schools and universities in Caracas and Montevideo but never finished a career in institutional terms.
Who are your biggest influences and inspirations?
I have a lot of influences in the contemporary painting, and in the history of art as well. My first and biggest influence since I could remember, has been Hieronymus Bosch and the Garden of delights. This is the main source of imaginary I have been drinking from for the last 25 years. After this, other imaginative painters have been important but not as much. After 2000 the conception of art changed in the way I saw it, or maybe I changed my way to see the art phenomena. This ambient of post-digital graphic design aesthetics also is part of my inspiration. The etchings and engravings from the XVII, XVIII, and XIX centuries related to alchemy and occultism, also the ones related to animals in the new continent, bestiaries, maps with monsters, and the ones related to anatomy are the base of the way I construct the images themselves, technically and conceptually. The imaginary of Gothic cathedrals and the enlighten miniatures of the middle ages also are a strong influence in my work. After that I admire a long list of painters and colleagues from the present time.
Nature, human imagination, fear, beauty, deep images in my mind, mythology – this inspires me. – Nicolás Sánchez
What kind of media and technique do you use?
I describe myself as a draftsman, I do drawings. For murals, I use bucket paint because I cannot work on this scale with the drawing tools, so I use brushes and paint for creating big, or huge drawings. The technique is similar to classic etching, the surfaces are cover by a sequence of lines and then the shadows and lights come from the thicken and find some parts of this lines. Is a very graphic way of drawing, where the volumes are defined by the density of lines. The specific features that make my work unique are the way to combine a historic technique finish simulation in big scale, mine are murals that look like etchings, with a very personal world of fantasy creatures that come from a profound research of archetypical and symbolic characters inside of my own mind and the universe of human symbols of all ages.
How does your creative process look?
It is an organized chaos, always before starting a mural. I fall into a personal chaos, that manifest in form of a crisis. The creation takes me in an absolute way until the day I start then this pressure releases and I ́m myself again. This is emotionally talking. Technically talking, I start making a research about some mythological, zoological, historic and cultural ambiance of the place, village, city or country where the mural will be painted, after that some animals, persons, characters or creatures emerge strongly and combine ones with each other and then the idea starts to appear, then I look references as pictures of the animals or persons of my interest and then I use photoshop to create a collage of the idea. Once I have it I translate it to lines and add my own style to it. Finally, take it to the wall with a grid and voila!
What are the themes you usually tackle in your work and why are they of particular interest to you?
As I have been mentioning before imagination, mythology and fantasy creatures have been my obsession since I was very young, this is the seal of my work, the existence of an invisible world. I cannot exactly answer why is this so interesting for me, I just need to put this creation out. The combination of human parts with animals, one of my favorite themes make me think of the definition of ourselves in relation to what we are not. The appearance of the monster, of the creature, of the deformity is the search of a human being. Let out these creatures that are not human makes me more human somehow.
What are the evolution/phases of your style over the years?
I’ve had a lot of strata in my work, I have them well identified, and call them:
The historic mythology works done between 10 and 13
The pop studying process from age 17 to 21
Fist AlfAlfA creatures, 23 – 25
Evolved AlfAlfA creatures, 25 – 26
The tentacle vaginas 26 – 28
The fantasy fishes 28 – 30
Actual works 30 – present time, 34
These stages are quite well differentiated and respond to different states of my own soul and creative condition. With the pass of the time my creatures are coming back to the origins, nowadays I work to find the original source from where I could create The historic mythology to develop the art I consider is the one I always wanted to do but accomplished with the etching style I just developed two years ago.
As I see myself, all these years of creation leave me at this point I ́m right now. The linear style I developed recently was for me like a new beginning in an artistic and a personal way to my career as an artist even when I ́ve been drawing for many years restarted for me in August 2016, since then I didn’t have the time to do so many things. In 2017 I did a 6 month painting journey visiting 5 Latin American countries and 7 European countries where I painted the most important murals of my career, after that in November 2017 I did a solo exhibition in Montevideo my hometown where I had the chance to edit and print a booklet that took me 2 years to write which is the conceptual foundation for the images shown on the exhibition that depict a whole world of unknown sea creatures called mermaid-like creatures. These are my milestones till now.
For Urban Nation in Berlin – Photo by Jennifer Sanchez
Empowerment of imagination, creation over all, reality is real, you have to deal with it, but the invisible world can be mold as desired. This freedom is inside everyone, and most of people don’t use it to make their lives better. – Nicolás Sánchez.
What are your closest plans?
In 2018 I plan to visit at least as many countries as I visited last year and paint walls in each one. Paint more murals, reach higher, create new, more challenging
creatures in technical and imaginative terms. Find new doors.
Thank you for the interview, Nicolás! We wish you good luck and a smooth road to your further career!
Nicolás Sánchez AlfAlfA: facebook
