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Gallery hosts talk with artist David Vasquez

March 26, 2015

By Sara Gottardi

On the beautiful calm evening in town on Friday, March 20 the Art Gallery of Bancroft was busy and opened with wonderful presentation and lighting for avant-garde creations by David Vasquez. People in constant conversation, curiosity and introducing one another coalesced around Vasquez’s pieces. They took in their beauty in awe and respect, as one lady having been in almost every day that week was left breathless, and Vasquez delighted in hearing and meeting her at the door. Vasquez’s wife Socorro and daughter Mia joined him on his journey up to Bancroft for the Artist’s Talk event on his paintings. The art gallery was elegantly set up with two small tables, one with glasses and two choices of wine and the other with small trays of finger foods. Vasquez’s paintings hung all around the gallery, each capturing not only the eyes, but the soul and mind as you stood mesmerized by them.

Vasquez first started business in the Dominican but lives in the Scarborough area and often travels to Florida, he acquires his muse by seeing places he likes and simply by keeping them in mind and feeling them out instead of using photos when he recreates them in paintings, “I like to paint without looking at photos so whatever happens – for me – is like a new discovery,” he says.

Manhattan is one of Vasquez’s favorite places to paint, as well as Toronto he says, “I love the Toronto skyline, I like the CN Tower, but I like to paint them from the island because you see a different angle of Toronto and it becomes almost like an island itself, because you can only see water, the city and the sky”.

Each painting holds an emotionally charged variation of feelings that, “express what I cannot say with words, if I want to say something that I don’t have words for, I try to say it with my paintings. If I’m happy you can see it, if I’m sad you can see that as well; so I always like to put something in my paintings that I can’t say with words,” Vasquez says.

Vasquez is attracted and attached to using his palette knife and oils most, having first started with acrylic he found that oil was what he fell in love with. “With the palette knife it gives you enough time to blend colours, you can erase, and because it gives you enough time before it dries unlike acrylic to change something”.

Talking about the colours he uses he commented on the far more rich and deep feeling oil gives to paintings and that, “with the palette knife whatever happens, happens, it gives a lot of the details to my paintings,” as well he says. His paintings represent him as the person he is inside he says, and allow him to share what he can’t verbally. Vasquez believes art should speak and relate to people, make them feel something, which shows his connection to others who collect and love his works.

Details of Vasquez’s paintings come out without hesitation as he loves to discover and commends that painting oil with the palette knife makes him happiest as it is like freedom to him. Talking in energetic manners, Vasquez says that he’s a happy person because he doesn’t see the purpose in feeding negativity. He says, “There’s times you can be sad but you shouldn’t give too much importance to the sadness because you don’t want to reserve any space for sadness.” He believes that there’s always a positive aspect to a sad circumstance and that it can still be a positive, happy outcome.

“You have to see things in a positive way,” Vasquez says.

The gallery will have Vasquez’s paintings to admire and purchase until March 28. You can find him on his website: innersoulart.ca.