ADAN LÓPEZ ALEMÁN

"He coined the term 'Painting of the Soul' to describe my work. To define this concept, I'll first have to mention another term.

'The Collision'. Every time I embark on the artistic process of painting a new portrait, there comes a moment when the presence of the person being portrayed becomes inevitable. That point where the transition occurs from being just a canvas with pigment deposited on it, to being a person with a soul present in my studio, I call it 'The Collision'. There's no specific moment of collision anywhere in the creative process. In some images, it can happen early, and in others, almost at the end. So, I've come to the conclusion that the level of detail plays no role. It's something I do intuitively and can't be explained by established rules.

When we paint portraits, we're talking about more than just the technique and medium we use. For me, a portrait is not about painting a face; it's about painting the soul. If I were only to try to capture the features of a face or the shapes of a body, the viewer would never be moved by my work. The key is to convey an emotion, a feeling. First, you have to feel the piece, and then you can understand it. It's this approach that I always strive to achieve with each work I create.

When I realized that people observing my work always agreed that they could feel a force coming from the canvas, I decided to call my work 'Paintings of the Soul'."