Miguel Tadeo

“Only expression can give reality to reality. And reality is not in the reality, but only is to be found in expression.” Yukio Mishima

I know that it is of little importance, but I was born in 1986 in Logroño and paint in Madrid, in a place that does not have much space but which serves at the same time as a living-dining room and study; a space in which the spices used for cooking and the trementine are mixed together beneath the cold light which is wont to bathe the pictures, the plates and the sofa.

If to begin I have to use the verb “to be”, I am, as Andrew Wyeth assured, “a fanatic of painting”; I consider that it should constitute an effective narration, reasonable, timeless and mysterious and perhaps for that reason I enjoy nudes; the absence of clothing and of decorative elements impedes situating the image in time and underlines the fragility of the human being.

But all of this has come after; that is to say, painting, the cold light of my living-dining room, the oil paint and the nudes .... First was Michael, a boy from La Rioja (who I find myself obliged to name because of the biographic taste of the lineage of artists) and who lacked any reference to painters in the family; a curious boy who got it into his head that he wanted to be given drawing classes because he understood that he should study Fine Arts; a youth who failed the entrance exam to this career.

After such an impact against my destiny, and with charcoal still on my eyelashes, I had to reinvent myself, change course and not go back to talking in the third person; I studied the Restoring of Cultural Heritage elements and afterwards I specialized in Graphic Documenting. These studies made me three gifts: knowledge, technique and intimacy – after all, it is prohibited to make use of one’s artistic skills for the sake of fidelity to the work and its creator.

Knowledge, technique and intimacy: without realizing it, I had found the cornerstones on which I could rest my easel.

So, at the age of 24, I began to present my pictures at a national painting competition, calling the attention of Antonio López; we met and struck up a friendship which lasts up to the present day, and which was fundamental in order for me to dissipate all my doubts; I just had to paint. I found that painting myself in all possible positions, starting out with photographic studies (which is how I am used to working), and with time, with other models, muses, friends and people I know who passed before my eyes - in my pictures coming to life (or losing it).

As I understand that dialogue with a work must be established from the very beginning (confidence cannot be feigned), I almost never use manufactured frames; I myself tense the canvas and apply my own primer. In the same way, when the frame is on wood, I try to carry out all the process with old time techniques. I shut myself away neither from experimentation nor novelty; nonetheless, the old methods treasure enough centuries for one to have faith in their durability. The techniques and frames from the last decades have not been aged by the years. I want neither intermediaries nor apriorisms, I only wish to offer the truth without artifice where the punch line is diluted ... loses wind and withdraws ... before a realist conception, stripped of decaffeinated adornments. The liberty to express, without giving an opinion.

Now I should dedicate a paragraph to prizes and laurels, but I will leave it out and finish this profile pointing out that nowadays I am still in Madrid, I still paint and even though I know it matters little, for me that is sufficient.