Description
‘The Archangel’ by Gabi de la Merced
Artist: Gabi de la Merced
Title: ‘The Archangel’
Medium: Pencils on Archival Toned Paper
Dimensions: 12″ x 9″
Framing: Unframed
Year of Creation: 2020
About the Artist:
(Artist Bio)
Born in Madrid, Gabi de la Merced was raised in a suburban city where, due to an American military airbase, he was early exposed to what became major influences to him, such as graffiti, skateboarding and American popular music, at a time when there was no internet and almost no other way in which those cultures could arrive to Spain.
Madrid provided Gabi with great museums for studying his beloved masters of portraiture. Spanish villages trapped in the remote past, where Catholic Church and its powerful iconography permeate every level of society, influenced his subconscious mind with mighty images from an early age.
Both academically and professionally he initially was into photography and cinematography. He studied traditional animation at the Madrid School of Film and worked for a long time as colourist for film features and commercials, thus acquiring a background in the colour field, an aesthetic criteria and a narrative sense that would be key for the development of his later work.
Among his countless influences, elements of the past collide with modern culture icons. The Old Masters, the Book of Revelation, medieval engravings or Classical Mythology have the same importance as the Masters of the Universe, Warren magazines, early skateboard graphics or the legends associated to an obscure musician.
Self-taught, in his meticulously detailed and obsessively rendered graphite drawings and acrylic paintings, he finds the perfect allies to organize all those images piled up chaotically in his mind and a getaway in order to make sense of them, as well as to continue developing his interest in the exploration of light and colour.