JaZzArt en València

I hope you enjoy this pageantry of faith and religious dedication in one of the most colourful and solemn festivals of Spain: Holy Week.

After two years, the celebrations of Holy Week have resumed and they are incredible…

The origins of the Holy Week processions in Sevilla go back to the XVI C when Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara declared that the Brotherhoods should go to the Cathedral to do the procession of penitence.

This year, finally allowed to process, the Brotherhoods of Sevilla, and from all the cities of Spain, are taking their «pasos», the large and beautifully ornate litters to the streets and through their regularly assigned passages in the city.

In Sevilla, Holy Thursday is the day of the «mantillas» within the historical Brotherhoods. In the morning the members…along with anyone else…visit the temples, in the afternoon, the Holy Services. One of the most historic and ancient Brotherhoods, Los Negritos, departs from their centuries old Chapel on Recaredo Street.

Members of Brotherhoods sometimes must wait years to finally be assigned a place within the processions…

If you ever get a chance to visit Spain, and you are there during Holy Week, it is well worth a trip down south to Andalucia. Not that we do not do Holy Week processions, for instance, in Valencia (where I am from), we do, actually everywhere, but the biggest ones, the most impressive ones, are in the south, especially in Sevilla and Málaga.

Cheers…

Spillwords.com presents: A Mis Naranjas Verdes, poem by Francisco Bravo Cabrera, a poet who uses words, music and paints on a canvas to …

Source: A Mis Naranjas Verdes by Francisco Bravo Cabrera at Spillwords.com

Todavía le queda bastante, sin dudas. Un cuadro se desarrolla solo…a veces…y marca el tiempo a su manera y uno no puede apurar las cosas, paso a paso y a poc a poc…

Este cuadro mide 40×50 cm (me gustan mas grandes pero es un encargo y me han especificado el tamaño) y demuestra una de mis cosas favoritas al pintar, las caras…

Pero es Jazz porque se ha desarrollado de la manera jazz, o sea, usando la improvisación…nunca debe ser cosa aleatoria…y el ritmo. Si os fijáis bien notareis el ritmo, el swing de la pintura, de la composición, de su totalidad…

__________________________________________________________________________________

There is still much work to do, for sure. A painting has its own concept of time. It must develop alone because it doesn’t do it on your time, it does it on its own. And you cannot rush it. Little by little. Step by step…

This painting measures 16″ x 20″ (I like them bigger but this is a commission piece and the size was chosen by the client). It depicts some of the things that I love to draw, faces…

But it is Jazz because it was developed in the way Jazz is, in other words using improvisation…never randomness…and rhythm. If you look well you will feel the painting’s rhythm, its swing, in the paint, the composition, in its totality…

__________________________________________________________________________________

Aquí os dejo un vídeo con mas ejemplos de mi «Jazz Art»:

Here I leave you with a short video with more examples of my «Jazz Art»:

Gracias…

Cheers…

La vida es como la arquitectura…

El arquitecto tiene que estudiar ciencia, como la estudian los ingenieros y también desarrollar conocimientos artísticos. Tiene que crear, pero su visión artística tiene que encajar dentro de los parámetros científicos que gobiernan la fabricación de casas y edificios, y no se puede pasar, ni tampoco dejar que la imaginación lo lleve a construir castillos en las nubes.

Así es la vida nuestra. La gobierna la ciencia de la salud, la nutrición, las leyes sociales y de la vida, pero también tenemos que saber como desarrollar ese arte que es vivir plenamente. No somos como las plantas que simplemente absorben el sol, haces la fotosíntesis y viven. Nosotros no vivimos porque respiramos. Tenemos que aprender, diariamente, y el aprendizaje es por toda la vida. No podemos dejarnos engañar por aquellos que nos dicen que cuando uno llega a una cierta edad no aprende mas.

Gandhi, el gran politico y filosofo de la India moderna, dijo que hay que vivir como si uno fuera a morir manana y aprender como si uno fuera a vivir por siempre…

La vida es como una playa, donde uno puede sentarse en la arena, contemplar las aguas del mar y a la vez dejar que la imaginación siga el vuelo de una gaviota…

Gracias…

This is a special part of the Art History series featuring some of the great artists of all times. As you might have guessed I am a big admirer of El Greco and I have done other videos about his work.

I invite you to check this one out:

And then this one:

It is the appropriate time of the year.

Cheers…

Uno de los artistas mas interesantes de la historia del arte y con un toque completamente moderno, tanto que diria yo que fue el que le dio pie a muchas de las vanguardias del Siglo 20…

Gracias…

I had forgotten many…or should I say several…things about Miami, especially about the flora and the fauna, which, sincerely, I never really paid too much attention to it. But now I see those Royal Palms (Roystonea regia) and I was reminded of how much I admired them. Beautiful, proud, tall, huge trunk, seemingly powerful, yet there is something fragile about them. I don’t know if they are protected species, (which they are in Florida), they should, but it would be a shame to put these majestic palms at risk.

The Royal Palms that we see here in Florida were originally a gift of the Cuban president that presided over the island back in the early 1930’s. They are a species native to the Caribbean, Central America and parts of Mexico. Miami has many of these incredibly tall Royal Palms and they are beautiful.

Miami Beach, at this time of the year has beautiful weather. The day starts with a breezy cool 18 degrees (Celsius) and then slowly rises to the mid twenties and the breeze, at least here next to the Atlantic Ocean, never stops. I am quite happy about that because when I left Valencia the weather was terrible. It was grey, raining and very cold and it still is. Spring weather has not yet arrived to the Mediterranean coast of Spain but it is thriving here in South Florida, thank God!

One thing I will miss, being here in the US, is «Semana Santa» (Holy Week) which is a big, big event, not so much in Valencia, but in nearby Cuenca and further south to Andalucia it is huge. Millions of people come to see the processions and being that the celebrations had been prohibited for two years, this year it will be incredible. I am sorry to miss it, but…

In any event, I wish you all a happy Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday (Easter). In the meantime I will get back to work here on my thing, which is painting…

Cheers…

The world we love will always be our refuge.

The lessons that I’ve learned I will transmit.

I’ve been sending my messages in verses,

I’d like to one day think that I’ll succeed.

I came from one lone star above the waters,

I turned into a drop of raging sea.

Upon the beach a grain of sand resembled

the very thing that life has given me.

I am a face that mixes, blends and merges,

into the multitudes that walk and hope and dreams.

I’ve learned from every soul that smiled and welcomed,

that welcomed my beliefs and what I’ve been.

I’ve been a cloud that loves the blueness of the sky,

the brilliance of the sun,

the power of the breeze.

C.2022, Francisco Bravo Cabrera, 10 APR 2022, Miami Beach, Florida (USA)

Trying to get a different perspective on jazz as I walk on the «Miami Beach Beachwalk» alongside the Atlantic Ocean, but all I hear is people riding by on their bikes (Miami Beach, in all their wisdom, did not make a bike path) with speakers blasting, like we all want to hear what they’re listening to…what ever happened to earphones…while they scare children and the elderly weaving their way through the throngs of pedestrian tourists, mostly from the US Midwest, white as fish and getting ready to turn red as lobsters in the Florida sun…

I have to say that I do not like House Music, Reggaetón, Hip-Hop, Rap, R&B, or other forms of music sung or performed by corporate artists created, marketed and sold to millennials nowadays. I am a rocker and a jazz-man, although I love Country Music, Swing, and the music…of course…of my country (Spain), and other European music, songs and sounds. So I am not inspired at all by Miami Music because I pass on it, for sure…

So, as I showed you in my last post about the new prototype Phase IV JaZzArt I have been sketching and searching for ideas using my «jazz-art» technique of allowing the drawing/illustration/painting to develop it’s own theme through improvisation and of course, keeping the rhythm. I no longer rely on the ambient sounds, I take my jazz with me, in my ears, I am courteous and do not want to bother other people by walking around with a loud speaker blasting John Coltrane, and I have been fast at work. As you know, a painting or a drawing is not an spontaneous creation or an intuitive effort. It must be studied, planned, thought of, developed and worked on meticulously until it «tells» you that if you put one more line you ruined it.

Here is a «blast from the past» that I think…hope…you will enjoy and it gives you a more ample perspective of the way that I paint and my philosophy of art.

Cheers…

The earliest depictions can be considered graffiti and is dated as far back as the year 200 A.D.

Here are some of the more contemporary depictions of the Crucifixion.

Cheers…