David Saborido

For a long time now, light and shadow have been an essential part of my painting and of my creative process; that encounter is fundamental to me, which is why I titled it “Encounters with Light.” It is a concept I have been working on and investigating tirelessly for years—a personal search that I need to pursue again and again, day after day. Creating in this way heals me and gives meaning to my work.

As I discover each piece, I try to make the invisible visible: spaces that were once dark and hidden in shadow are, at certain moments, illuminated and remain there, frozen—filled with light—within the work forever. It is like “switching on a small light where everything was once in darkness.”

As if it were a kind of curse that constantly draws me back to it, today it has become an inner and conceptual necessity to find these spaces and bring them into the light through my painting. In this search and struggle throughout the process of encounter, in trying to bring them to life, I lose a great deal of energy and even some years of life… but I know that my life as a painter would have no meaning without this struggle.

I work on the floor of my studio; there I paint, kneeling over the piece, using acrylic and oil paints, creating fine, subtle transparencies of pigment and precise nuances through delicate hammer strikes, which reveal the work to me. A very interesting and unique detail for me is the sound produced by the very act of creating the work through my hammer. For example, the sound I hear when my hammer strikes the wooden panel to fix and capture the light—just as a sculptor strikes marble in search of form—those small blows are essential and revealing to me. They are sounds that I record to listen to later, and when I listen to them carefully, I realize they are the soul of my works.

Sometimes I record them and listen to them slowly during the process of making the piece; other times, I linger over them once the work is finished. Curiously, they are “my notes,” just as a traditional easel painter studies and carefully observes their sketches and studies before painting—I listen to those simple sounds.

For this reason, painting is for me an act of love, a personal will to merge with the work, with its lights and shadows. This is why I devote myself to creation, to painting: out of an inner necessity, where each day is a struggle, another battle lost in the search for a new work.