Portrait of a Visual Artist and Sculptor
In the Eyes of a Poet Friend
Also see:
• VICENTE JÁUREGUI IN HIS OWN WORDS
• BIOGRAPHY OF VICENTE JÁUREGUI
• SPANISH TOWN THANKS ARTIST FOR DONATION
• VICENTE JÁUREGUI IN HIS OWN WORDS
• BIOGRAPHY OF VICENTE JÁUREGUI
• SPANISH TOWN THANKS ARTIST FOR DONATION
Vicente showing Fr. Gilbert art books that feature his works (below, left) and those of fellow Spanish and Russian artists (above).
Laredo, Spain: After we visited the apartment of Vicente Jáuregui, the elusive Basque visual artist and sculptor who lives in this city, I asked poet Antonio Aguirre, his friend who had brought me there, this question: "What do you have to say about Vicente Jáuregui as a human being and as an artist?"
"You're asking me what I have to say about Vicente as a human being and artist?" Antonio replied. "To answer your question, I feel that I must imagine as if I were painting. I ask the staring canvas to help me draw the lines. I try to choose the right colors from the palette and dip the paintbrush in red, blue, and yellow. I let my hand fly. As drops of color rain down on the empty white, something comes up. It is the face of Vicente, but his eyes are still closed. His face is nothing but a ghost on a laughing canvas without his eyes. I look into my memories. He opens his eyes. I need some brown, some yellow, some green. There. Yet I realize something else is not there, quite not yet...Perhaps just a tiny bit, but one that makes all the difference.
"You're asking me what I have to say about Vicente as a human being and artist?" Antonio replied. "To answer your question, I feel that I must imagine as if I were painting. I ask the staring canvas to help me draw the lines. I try to choose the right colors from the palette and dip the paintbrush in red, blue, and yellow. I let my hand fly. As drops of color rain down on the empty white, something comes up. It is the face of Vicente, but his eyes are still closed. His face is nothing but a ghost on a laughing canvas without his eyes. I look into my memories. He opens his eyes. I need some brown, some yellow, some green. There. Yet I realize something else is not there, quite not yet...Perhaps just a tiny bit, but one that makes all the difference.
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“Vicente’s soul is in his eyes. When you look at them, you get to see his soul. Silver is like a shadow, but most of all, transparent. He runs among the trees, hides beneath a trunk, jumps, then runs again, leaps out into the wild, here and there, dances under the sun, deaf to anything but the sounds of music, blind to all things but the colors of Creation…the sounds and colors of Creation, nothing less.
“The palette chides me, ‘What do you expect from me? Did I ever offer you transparency? How dare you ask for transparency? Talk to me of colors!’ And I suddenly think of Achilles. Achilles, the hero, had a weak ankle. It strikes me he must have been a relation, twice removed, to Vicente. His ankles are delicate, but he holds his heart in his hands, not knowing how to keep it safe, under lock and key, as most of us have learned. 
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“And therefore, he is alive. He is ferociously alive. He has a pure heart alive like nobody else I know, even after the thorns of the hundred bushes in the path left their marks on it, even with the scars that won’t heal. Look again. Pay attention. Have you seen this beautiful dragonfly? Look, right behind that fern perched on my knapsack. It does not care. It just glows. Look at its wings, see how the sun shines on them, and how they hold the wind so still. So perfect! It is so perfect it almost hurts. It belongs to the Tretyakov Gallery. But where are the queues? Where are the crowds? Will none bear witness to this beauty? What on earth are people doing? Creation is happening! Does anybody not realize that? And right in front of our noses!
"With Vicente, food, drink, and conversation are included in the deal. He has no time for complaints; if he invites you to join his party, you will get to see deeper, an explorer under the mere surface of things, in a perpetual search for the answer, one must get to the essence of the character, to the purity of the form, to the soul itself, and its link with Creation. |
He captures transparency, and pours it in the mouth of his creatures, for them to drink, like a wine of joy, they sip in harmony, little by little, to bring them to life, and a life to last beyond our breathing. |
"Yes. Vicente's paintings and sculptures seem precious gems he digs out in silence from the hidden garden of God. In a sense he is a miner. In another sense a Conquistador. His fingers, like ripened grapes, forcefully endowed with fertility. When he works, the clay in his hands becomes full of transparent shades, and time stands still, and white. He understands transparency. He captures this fugitive in my palette, and pours it in the mouth of his creatures, for them to drink, like a wine of joy, they sip in harmony, little by little, to bring them to life, and a life to last beyond our breathing.
"But to me he is more than that. He is my friend. For some just a word of six letters. Indeed a treasure not for the reach of us all."
"But to me he is more than that. He is my friend. For some just a word of six letters. Indeed a treasure not for the reach of us all."
