SANTIAGO EVANS CALANES
Name: Santiago Evans Calanes
Age: 27
Birthplace: Mexico City, Mexico
Home: Between Mexico City, Mexico and Antwerp, Belgium
Practice: Painting
Voyeurisms (II), 2022, acrylic on canvas
Where does your practice originate from?
My practice originates from my great-grandmother (Goga). She was a watercolorist, and I would follow her around Mexico to exhibitions and paint beside her in her garden from a very young age. I enjoyed it so much that in my kindergarten yearbook, when they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wrote "pintor".
What’s something that remains timeless in your eyes?
The shadows of William Blake and the lights of Pierre Bonnard. To me, they are the real protagonists of their paintings. They're like organic figures built up by a careful layering and balance of color. Images appear through them. Not by a line, but by a shadow or a piece of light.
How do you define your artistic research in three words?
Down (the) Rabbit Hole.
What are you dreaming about these days?
Afternoons under the warm Mexican sun, surrounded by the plants that inspire me, the people I love and cool water to dip my feet in.
Where do you find beauty?
In the imperfections and nuances of my surroundings; like an older building made of bricks that have slight changes in color from brick to brick, sometimes pockets of bricks that are the same but adjacent to a lighter constellation of bricks next to it. Together they can create an organic pattern that is framed by the straight borders of the building and can almost resemble a very muted painting.