It’s the first volume of The Holy Beauty Project. You’ll be able to get a first glance of my most recent paintings, which I haven’t shown to anyone yet, while you check me dance around in a crazy videotaped photoshoot. Yes…you read it right: Painting + Photo + Video!!  :-)

SEE AND READ EVERYTHING ABOUT IT HERE!!!!

I was planning to launch the project by mid August, but I’m applying for an art call and the voting deadline is tomorrow. Please vote for me here!!! (Rate my portfolio).

Looking forward to your feedback :)

Details of 9 brand new paintings! (Click on the image for better view).

I’ve been keeping these back for a while now because they’re part of a big project I’m working on, that I’ll share with you very, very soon!

Will you be able to handle it? Stay tuned to find out…

;)

I came across Natalie’s work a few years ago when I first joined Flickr. I’d been watching the evolution of her work for a while before approaching her, as well as enjoying her writings (just as an example, I heart and second what she says about Narcissism in this text, among many others). Since the beginning I was hooked by Natalie’s continued efforts in self-portraiture, showing an intelligent, liberated -and beautiful- woman with control over her body and image. I favor beauty in contemporary visual arts and I admire a woman who takes power of her own image, regardless of all the criticism she can get for sharing -nude or not nude- artistic pictures of herself. Natalie has also a keen sense of the audience, reflected in her consistently appealing imagery, yet it’s not all just plain ‘trickery’ like the one populating sites like Flickr. There is brains and guts to it.

The ideas for our collaboration came mostly from the shared concern and feeling of impotence towards issues like the disdain for -nude or not nude- female self-portraiture , the omnipresence of gender stereotypes and censorship -specially of women’s nipples. The images created are ‘commentaries’ on these issues, perhaps useless as various Flickr users have remarked, but to me all art is ‘useless’. Furthermore, we’d both been previously inspired by Balthus, which led to  “The Artists’ Sketch” . This image in particular didn’t quite result as I first imagined, mainly because we had to take the shots in a hurry. Natalie had to catch her plane back to Brighton on time! We spent several days afterwards both tweaking the image in Photoshop, until we finally decided for the semi-drawing version. But here’s another version you haven’t seen (click to enlarge):

There’s a non-Flickr version of “Booby Traps” on it’s way (for those who didn’t notice, the color of the tassels comes from the Flickr logo), in the meantime I’d also like to share the black and white version of “Pathetic Phallacy”, which I very much like (click to enlarge):

During the course of the photoshoots we took individual portraits of each other, so I have the material to create a couple of paintings with her as the model in the near future. I was very happy to have the opportunity to work with Miss Aniela. Thanks to Natalie and my agent Julie for making this collaboration possible!

Hope you enjoyed the results of our work! :) Read more in >Natalie’s blog post<.

Click on the image to see what participants are saying on Flickr!

Note: If you are not familiar with the Art Project Dialogue With the Radio, please >>go here<< to see what is it about.

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At last, the identity of the anonymous authors in the project Dialogue With the Radio has been revealed!! Remember the mysterious E, N, D and ENEDD? Well, find out who they are now!!!:

Allow me to introduce Nicolás Díaz Durana, who is standing right next to me in this not-so-artsy portrait.  We met in our hometown, Bogotá. We both went to catholic schools for boys and girls separately, where we developped a passionate desdain for labels, stereotypes, social standards, as well as anything that would give us false and gratuitous expectations concerning life, humankind, wellbeing, self-esteem, future, happiness, etc (i.e any kind of religous group, political party, self-help group, a fan club, a fast diet program, and so forth). But we didn’t meet until University, and before that we both thought we were bound to end up alone, for we are conscientious guardians of our own individuality, and we do not embrace strangers easely. Subsequently, we entered each other’s lives slowly, almost reluctantly…and I don’t know when and how we fell in love, it just happened. Our story is not one to put in a movie, epic lovestory overseas, tragedy with a happy ending.

We are just two human beings that truly love each other. We stubbornly search for ways to improve our lives and we do not intend to change the world.

>>He writes, I make images. He is E, N, D, ENEDD. One, two and many more. We both created and run Dialogue With The Radio, the online version as well as the design of the book*. We just came back from a holiday, more sick than ever of flowers and sweet pieces of joyful empty sounds. We don’t want to filter our ideas anymore…not even a tiny bit.

“How talented are you? Can you speak your mind? I mean, what’s down under, not what’s floating in the shiny top of your very kind convinience.

Images speak out. This section invites you to do the same thing. Are you to it”.**

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* We’re designing the book…please be patient about that, it’s a long process!

** Quote from >>the very first DWTR set.