Pedro Paricio

In Timber Line, echoes of Hockney’s influence rings clear. Compositionally, the work immediately reads as a homage to Hockney’s gigantic multi-canvas work Winter Timber, which is currently on show at the artist’s major retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. Both works feature a wooded landscape with sparsely leafed trees hinting at late autumn. A path cuts through the scene vertically and is populated by rows of timber. A half-cut tree sits in the foreground – its fate easily imagined by the piles of wood filling the pathway. Paricio’s landscape is tightly cropped and imbued with fantastical colours. The half-cut tree is given his signature treatment of vivid geometric shapes – often a focal point in Patricio’s oeuvre. A brilliant, Fauvist palette and approach to perspective is something Patricio shares with Hockney. The artists’ novel employment of colour and perspective infuses their landscapes with hues of joy and playfulness. Yet beyond their spirited surfaces, these landscapes are indicative of artists who are seriously concerned with pushing boundaries through their execution of colour and form.

When considering artistic explorations of swimming pools, Hockney’s iconic representations inevitably come to mind. His depictions of California in the 1960s and 1970s, such as A Bigger Splash (1967) and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972) cemented the swimming pool as a symbol of modern leisure. In Pool, Paricio dives headfirst into one of the most iconic motifs of 20th-century art history. The work takes a specifically Paricio-esque shape with the diving board rendered in colourful kaleidoscopic patterns – a scheme truly complementary to the fun and laid-back nature of its environment. The luminous reflections dance across the water in Hockney fashion, their fluidity standing in contrast to the rigid, flat blocks of colour found throughout the canvas.

 

Paricio’s Glacier landscape series takes inspiration from the watercolours Hockney produced during a trip to Norwegian and Icelandic fjords in 2002. In both places the artist was enraptured by the light of the long days of late spring and summer. The interaction of light on the landscape is something Paricio has noted about his home of Tenerife, where the strong natural sunlight intensifies the colour of the natural landscape.

In Glacier's, Paricio’s exploration of colour and perspective is pushed further, as the formal properties of perspective dissolve and figurative and abstract meet on one canvas. This is achieved through the rendering of natural forms in electric colours, appearing on the canvas as superimposed masses of mountain, land and water. Paricio masterfully differentiates between this patchwork of colour further with the addition of carefully placed linework and expressive brushstrokes to denote texture and shape.

Paricio has affirmed that there is a piece of him in every painting. When studying his application of colour that seems remarkably clear. As a creator, Paricio acts as a prism, where strands of influence such as environment, lived experience, and art historical references are absorbed and refracted back onto the canvas. What follows are uniquely formed works of art that, while having firm roots in art historical tradition, emerge as deeply personal and novel renditions of his chosen subject. 

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