Over the past five years, I have been making ink drawings in small sketchbooks in a daily-like manner. In these drawings, I work quickly from one to the next, spontaneously filling sketchbooks with minute line depictions that are simple and naive by nature, but evoke issues from a subconscious level.
Photo by Scott David Gordon
For the Serie Project, I chose drawings from some of these sketchbooks to work out my composition. I picked them randomly, and I made sure that they correspond to each other. This, I believe, reflects the way in which I work. I love to work in this fashion. It’s like a mirror reflecting images of memory, which surface as a poetic language of drawing.
The characters that emerge are sometimes funny and other times somber, showing both a dark and a soft side of humanity. They reference my personal history and experiences growing up in Honduras and immigrating to Canada.
In Honduras, I was affected by the social upheaval and the unjust wars of the Central American region. My response to these issues from the past and present appear in the drawings as bleak, ironic, satirical, peculiar, and child-like, as I strive to find sense in life.
—Nahúm Flores
Whims of Convention
Nahum Flores
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Reprinted from Nahum Flores’ official website:
Nahúm Flores was born in 1974 in Danlí, Honduras and immigrated to Canada at age 17, after living in Mexico and the US. He studied Drawing and Painting at the Ontario College of Art & Design. In 2006, his work was selected among five other artists for the Biennale of Visual Art of Honduras. In conjunction, he participated in the Biennale of the Central America Isthmus in El Salvador. Nahúm has also exhibited his work at the National Gallery of Fine Art in Tegucigalpa. In 2007, he and his collaborators, Z’otz* Collective, participated in a multidisciplinary art residency in Trsic, Serbia.
Nahúm Flores’ works are executed randomly and intuitively by applying multiple layers of water based and organic materials, such as acrylic paint, gel medium, acrylic polymer, sand, ink, transfers and pencil. The drawings on the surface are a result of an alchemy of colours, rich textures and forms, which lure the mind with ideas and questions.
The fusion of the drawings and the material seduces the artist and guides his imagination to create expressive characters and amorphous forms. These characters show us both the beautiful and horrible aspects of nature, the dark and soft side of humans, through their gestures and actions, and through the situations they evoke. The barren landscapes from which the characters emerge reflect Flores personal history and experiences growing up in Honduras. There, he was affected by the social upheaval and the unjust wars of the Central American region. Flores’ childhood experiences have deeply affected his outlook and as a response, are reflected in his work.
As a source of inspiration, he uses photographs taken with great passion, in travels in Canada, Central America, Mexico and Europe. The photographs of old walls, tree bark, stones, and rusted materials are sometimes transferred onto the surface of his paintings to capture a sense of time and spatial depth.
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