Comentarios realizados por Ana Pardo

This is the second picture in the series My life and in it, as in the first picture, I continue to develop the ambivalent effect of fantasy and reality on human behaviour.
What is fantasy? Where is it to be found?

All who belong to the world of art and who have a gift for words could fill hundreds of pages surrounding the concept of fantasy in a silk bubble; they are keen to safeguard the radiance of its magic and to protect it from a reality which they all see as dehumanizing. The words would flow like satin onto the sheets of paper, some adorned with ingenuity, others intoxicating our will with seductive descriptions, all with that sweetness which puts the mind to one side. They could not find any legitimate, secret resting place since fantasy is capricious and wanders like a free spirit, landing briefly only in those intelligences which are eager to strip off the mourning imposed on us by modern life, so implacably pragmatic.

For those who are more practical, the universe of fantasy is closely linked to an excess of imagination, a whirlpool of desires, plans, ambitions, fancies, dreams and utopias which appear in no order, contradict each other and are typical of youth. Fantasy is an intellectual flu, typical of youth and lessened by maturity.

These attitudes are more commonplace, but what is the true structure that supports each of these positions? Have they been formulated correctly? If the spectator had to identify with one of them, which would they choose?

True, we can find people from all walks of life on both sides of the threshold, yet the vast majority of readers who pay attention to these suggestions will respond as they desire, and because they do not understand the reason for their desire, they will be wrong twice. As I follow this approach, many will believe that I am only trying to produce an illusion by playing with words, but let us not forget that although in the world of fantasy not all is as it seems, reality can contain fantastic secrets which may confuse less prepared minds. So let’s develop both positions and see where they lead.

For the first group, those on the side of Fantasy, the picture seems to describe itself since I set it in a hollow in a wood, a place of withdrawal, a secret place, the home of little animals, where an evocative figure emerges to guide our plans. For these who are open-minded and receptive, the metaphorical lyricism found in these corners has always been a source of inspiration; the smallest, most hidden things contain greater, more trustworthy realities because although reality splits into countless winding paths, these all lead towards the same end, the light of understanding. The poet can locate a strange phenomenon under the roots of trees and the mathematician a strange number, but if we look carefully at their essential nature and at the content of what they say we will discover a greater reality where there is room for us all.
For the second, those addicted to common sense, fantasy lives in a tangle of fictions fed by the avidity of youth, preventing individuals from realizing what mechanisms really control their lives. Fantasy develops with models of freaks, spirits, and fairies, all in magic scenarios, majestic towers and sinister roots. If these people had to attribute any metaphorical element, such as hollowness, to the picture, they would present it as the narrow space in which so much subjectivity is elaborated, or as a well, the prison of those minds that cannot break away from the seductive song of the mermaid that bewitches our reason.

For the first group, the fantasy is always elaborated in warm shades, dabbling in reds and yellows, radiating their warmth to fill the rest of the chromatic palette used in the work. The invention is transformed and takes on a real body.
For the others, the absence of reality is blurred in cold colours. White and blue become the true rulers and spread their icy halo over the rest of the scene: greens and violets always wander, confused, trying to elude their primary reality.

In short:
In the minds of visionaries the imagination fights to rebuild an alternative reality; for the others, fantasy is a way of evading reality.

The spectator may still hold to the initial decision, or may perhaps notice a certain weakening of their convictions. In Revelation, the girl shows her surprise at a truth that has been revealed to her and that is far removed from what she had imagined. As the daughter of a king, she felt like a princess abandoning her castle, her only desire to know a part of external reality; she would never for a moment have suspected her origin, her virtue or her destiny. But as the Roman proverb says, we make mistakes through ignorance and we learn through our mistakes; and the girl learnt that reality was none other than the dark hole, for as the daughter of a gardener, she herself was just an illusion, and the world that was opening up before her eyes was an illusion.

Revelation plays on perceptions, it is a paradox that dissents from popular feeling. In spite of what everybody thinks, it is the more correct people, those we call sceptics and realists, who have formed all the paradise of images that our intellect uses when we half-close our eyes and wish, for a moment, to be filled with the magic of fantasy. Leaving aside the exceptions that are an obligatory part of every hypothesis and going against the world, I do not believe in the romanticism of artists, in the loyalty of politicians or in the mysticism of prelates; these characteristics are ways of life to be found only in those who are unconnected with the composition and narration of fictions.
The writer and painter, who belong to the first group, are not the ones who believe in spirits although they bring them to life; the politicians and statespeople are not the ones who believe in the stability of a legal system although they decree it, the theologian and priest are not the ones who believe in the God who lays down our moral code, although they teach it. The believers, the sensitive ones, the mystics, the romantics who I described in the first group are the people who nurture, worship, reverence, struggle and die to make something real out of the fiction of more cautious people. One set is no better than the other, they complement and need each other. One set creates an empty, cold, insubstantial fiction; the other gives it reality and spirit.

Creation and recreation, two aspects of the imagination, two pillars of humanity. Revelation considers these two visions from both perspectives, and although human imagination is formed of many facets and can develop itself in any field, I aim to make the subject less ambiguous by giving the picture a classical finish; in other words I use a universal language which all people can understand. All will catch the significance of the picture’s atmosphere and will be able to take the values they find in it and apply them to their own world.

The picture does not seem to reflect antagonistic positions; quite the reverse, it expresses a balanced perspective. The young woman on the threshold perceives both natures. The painting does not lose its balance because nothing that is around the figure of the young woman has become unnatural. The picture could well have been made longer, more oblong, saturating these ideas on both sides, but Revelation has a message for us about proportion, the harmony we must find on the tracks of this duality. The picture has completed its work when it has given its message.
Revelation aims to encourage the spectator to become aware of themselves and their surroundings for a few moments. You may discover that some mystery is being revealed to you, as I did when I was painting it:
“Human Fantasy will always try to find a reality because the true essence of a human being is to live a fantasy eternally.”

                                                                             Ana Pardo