if you love it set it free – 168x122cm

Antonio Moreno Martin de Oliva
Spanish // Australian Artist
View all artworks from Antonio MMO

There are few things inside you’re own house that can make you feel at home. I don’t like bringing up memories, feelings, or thoughts while writing because they just become rather too obvious or I tend to hide them with poetic words and it becomes a bit thick,
so this is why I paint.

Winter 2021 was different, spending lockdown and having the studio built up at home made me share my thought moments in some of my daily living spaces. As a thing to combat the cold, I started taking baths and without realizing I found myself spending more time than usual in the bathroom, sitting contently in this very intimate space.
Little by little my bathroom became more of a safe space – a disconnection, where the bath was that object that brought me back home.

I use acrylics is because of their clean texture and homogeneous look, it creates the perfect base to play with oil sticks which create contrast with their thick texture and quick flow, they let you draw in a very expressive way. Each trace needs a quick pace to be fresh and continuous, they fix to the canvas and you just keep on going, there is no other way than moving forward. The need to draw is what has become essential in my latest works, I feel it connects my mind directly with the canvas and  releases the lines in a more essential and pure way, in the end, being minimal, strong, and honestly becomes a need if I want to express situations I’ve got hidden inside

My use of colour oil pastels attempts to mimic the changes in our skin during winter- affected by not only temperature but our emotional states, I usually compare it to when i dive in the ocean and experience this change greatly. The need to draw roughly and freely on my portraits was balanced with the carefully woven jumpers that cover and settle the atmosphere.

Antonio MMO