IQUIQUE: Drawings and Paintings

Arriving in the city of Iquique, in northern Chile, was above all an exercise in observation and discovery. For me, arriving for the first time, the experience carried something of a revelation: a city between the desert and the sea, suspended in a light unlike any other. In the brief span of a single week, this territory unfolded before my eyes as a space of vivid contrasts —the dryness of the hills, the immensity of the ocean, the echo of its nitrate history intertwined with the living pulse of its streets, coves, and port.I traveled as an artist, with the intention of seeing, recording, and allowing myself to be moved. I did not seek to depict Iquique from a distance, but to encounter it through direct experience —through the immediacy of a first impression. Drawing and painting in situ became a way of being present, of attuning myself to the tempo of the place, of allowing the environment to guide the line. Pencil, watercolor, and tempera thus became extensions of the gaze: tools to translate what the city offered in its rhythm, its temperature, its silences.During those days, I wandered along beaches, avenues, coves, and museums. I walked without a fixed destination, guided by curiosity and by the light itself. At times I paused before what seemed insignificant —a shadow cast on a wall, a flicker on the water, the slow movement of waves at the end of the afternoon. At others, it was the vastness of the landscape that imposed silence upon me, a pause, the need to look closer in order to understand.The works that make up this book are born from that initial experience —an unplanned, immediate encounter. They do not seek to construct a definitive vision of Iquique, but to convey the wonder of a first gaze: that fleeting instant when everything appears new, uncertain, and luminous. Each stroke, each wash of color, is a record of an immediate perception, an emotion translated into line and tone.In Iquique, the boundary between the desert and the sea seems to remind us that every presence is a delicate balance: dryness and brilliance, ruin and life, stillness and movement. Within that tension, I found an energy that invited slowness —to look without hurry, to pause, to let the place pass through me.This book gathers that gesture: the gesture of an artist observing for the first time, seeking to understand through the act of seeing and painting. It is the sensory result of an encounter —the trace left by a city when it is seen through the eyes of someone newly arrived. For to observe, ultimately, is also a way of belonging —if only for an instant—to that which welcomes us for the first time. Read more