Ernesto José Fernández Arias

Ernesto José Fernández Arias is a Cuban painter based in Andalusia. His work explores the connection between the human body and natural forms, using oil to build textured surfaces that often suggest skin, bark, veins or stone. He works slowly and instinctively, letting one painting suggest the next. In pieces like "Veins and Bones" and "Field of Joy," the body appears as landscape or memory, shifting between density and lightness. His images invite close observation, drawing attention to texture, ambiguity and the physicality of painting as a space for reflection and transformation.

Veins and Bones - Oil on canvas, 2025

Q: In your works, skin and bark, body and landscape seem to blur together. When did this theme start to feel important to you?

A: The connection between the human body and the natural landscape is something that appeared in my work long before I could formulate it clearly. At first, it was just a visual attraction, an intuitive feeling towards certain types of shapes, textures, and colors. But over time, that attraction became meaningful, until it became the conceptual and emotional core of what I paint today.

I remember very clearly the moment when this relationship was revealed more consciously. It was an ordinary afternoon, in the courtyard of my house in Havana. I was picking up guavas from the tree that we had always had, and I stopped, almost without thinking, to look at its trunk. 

What I saw left me surprised: the bark was not only brown or rough, as one could imagine; it had a range of subtle but intensely expressive colors. There were areas with pink tones, others more greenish, some bluish gray, even reddish touches. It was impossible not to relate that vegetable skin to human skin. Not only for the color, but also for the texture, for the wounds, the wrinkles, the layers, the signs of the passage of time.

That moment was engraved in my retina, and, without knowing it, it became the germ of a pictorial search that continues to this day. From then on I began to explore the idea that the body and nature are not separate entities, but surfaces that are reflected, that are touched, that share the same vital energy. I realized that what interested me was not to represent the body as an isolated object, but as part of a larger organic system. 

Like a fragment of landscape. In that process, my interest in artists like Lucian Freud was also fundamental, whose way of approaching the human body, with all its rawness and physicality, deeply impacted me. Freud showed the meat without filters, with an almost uncomfortable truth. However, my intention was to transfer that physicality to a more ambiguous, more symbolic terrain, where the body could lose its limits and merge with the plant, the mineral, the terrestrial.

Over time, this search also became emotional and philosophical. I understood that this fusion between skin and bark, between body and landscape, was a way of talking about the origin, about the common, about fragility and transformation. Both the skin and the bark are living surfaces that speak of time, change, wear, but also of resistance. I am interested in thinking of the body not as a machine, but as something deeply alive, connected with the environment, permeable to it.

In addition, in this dialogue between the human and the natural there is a sensual, loving, even spiritual dimension. Many of my works speak of contact, of the embrace, of the affective fusion between bodies, but also between species. I am interested in that intermediate area where you can no longer clearly distinguish what is human and what is vegetable. Because there, at that point of ambiguity, something very powerful arises: the possibility of recognizing ourselves in the other, even if that other is a tree, a root, or a mountain.

In short, this topic began as a visual observation, almost casual, but over time it was transformed into an axis of thought and creation. 

Today I can't imagine my work without that look that constantly seeks the common between the flesh and the earth, between the body and the landscape, between the self and what surrounds me.

Veins and Bones 1 - Oil on canvas, 2025

Veins and Bones 2 - Oil on canvas, 2025

Q: You mention working instinctively. What usually sets off a new piece for you — a feeling, a shape, something else?

A: My creative process is deeply marked by intuition and constant observation, both internal and external. However, if I have to point out a clear trigger for a new work, I would say that it is almost always the previous work that, in some way, "suggests" the next one. I work slowly, in layers, and that forces me — and at the same time allows me — to stay for a long time within the pictorial process. That duration makes many ideas begin to emerge while I am still immersed in the current picture.

It is curious, but the very act of painting, with all its successes and mistakes, becomes a constant source of signals. Sometimes an idea arises from something as simple as an accidental stain, a line that did not fit into the current composition but that arouses my curiosity, or a color that was not the planned one but that reveals an unexpected energy. They are details that may not have space in the work I am working on at that moment, but they remain resonating. 

That's why I feel obliged to always be alert. It is a kind of emotional and visual surveillance: I have to be attentive to everything that happens on the canvas because, at any time, the germ of a new piece can appear.

Sometimes it also happens to me that while listening to music — something that is almost always part of my process — a song, a sound, or even a word can trigger a new feeling. And that feeling can be connected with a shape that was already in the painting, or with something that was left half explored. Hence the need to remain impatient and, in a way, anxious. Because new ideas rarely arrive in a logical or programmed way; rather, they are revealed when I least expect it.

The fascinating thing is that, over time, when I look back, I notice how this chain of works is forming a kind of dialogue with each other. Each piece contains a fragment of the previous one and anticipates something of the next. It is as if there were an underground line that joins them, although in appearance they look different. And that continuity also has something mysterious, because I realize that I am not the one who has all the control. Sometimes I feel that creativity is an entity of its own, which manifests itself through me, but which has its own logic, its rhythm, its evolution.

When you have been working for years, something curious happens: the primary energy that drove you to start a series or a stage begins to transform. That initial motivation changes in form. Sometimes it fades, sometimes it becomes more subtle, more complex. And with it, the themes, the approaches, even the way one looks at the painting also change. It's as if that creative force grew with you, but also pushed you in directions that you hadn't considered. That seems deeply beautiful to me and, at the same time, overwhelming.

Today my work revolves around the human body, its textures, the fusion with the plant, the organic, the terrestrial. But I have no certainty about the future. I don't know what I'll be painting in five years. Maybe it still starts from the body, or maybe it explores something completely different. The only thing I'm clear about is that everything is in motion. The evolution of work is inevitable, even when the process is slow, intimate, almost imperceptible. And yet, that slowness hides a relentless strength, something that transforms you as long as you create.

That's why I say I'm not looking for ideas. Rather, I'm getting ready to find them in the middle of the process. In a way that didn't fit. In a tension that remained unresolved. In an energy that bothered me. Those traces become clues. And if one learns to listen to them, they can open unexpected paths. The important thing is to maintain an open, flexible relationship, alive with one's own practice. 

Because the real engine of what I do is not control, but surrender to discovery. And in that discovery, each work is a door to another possibility.

Q: In the "Veins and Bones" series, the body almost becomes a landscape. Has the body always felt like a kind of map to you?

A: I think so, although more than a map in the traditional sense of something that guides or locates, for me the body has always been a terrain. An ambiguous, fertile, complex terrain, where multiple elements can coexist and unfold. I understand it as a visual, emotional, and symbolic playing field. In it, I allow myself to explore from the most concrete — a vein, a wrinkle, a wound, an anatomical curve — to the most abstract and sensory.

The body, in my work, is not a finished figure, but a living surface where the forms are transformed, diluted, or multiplied.

In the series "Veins and Bones", that fusion between the body and the landscape becomes more evident. There are folds, branches, areas that could be read as parts of the body or as fragments of bark, rocks, wet earth. I am interested precisely in that ambiguity: the possibility that what the viewer sees does not have a single reading. That an image can simultaneously evoke something intimate and something external, something human and something natural.

The body, then, more than a map with fixed routes, is for me a compositional space, a terrain to build images with freedom. The composition is, without a doubt, one of the aspects that generates the most pleasure in the act of painting. To compose is to decide, but also to let oneself be carried away by the intrinsic taste of locating, relating, balancing. It is a process that has both thought and intuition, and in that back and forth I find one of the deepest pleasures of painting. 

That's where that "sybarite joy" occurs: that moment when the eye is lost between the forms and the judgment becomes a game.

Through the composition I can model the body as if it were an abstract landscape, where the traditional rules of representation are no longer necessary. Therefore, although my work has a clear figurative root, I believe that the level of observation to which I subject the forms inevitably leads me to a visual abstraction. Closely observing an area of skin, a plant texture, a vein under the surface, allows me to dissolve the shapes in patterns, in rhythms, in gestures. That radical approach transforms the recognizable into a new plastic language.

The interesting thing is that this process does not respond to a desire to hide the figurative, but to expand it. I am interested in showing that the body can be at the same time anatomy, emotion, territory, and symbol. That formal and symbolic richness is what drives me to continue working on it again and again, from different perspectives. It's a land that never runs out.

In short, the body has always been for me an inexhaustible platform of creation. Not as something that is represented, but as something that is inhabited. A place where I can play with matter, compose freely and generate images that invite contemplation, visual touch, doubt. Because, in the end, what I am looking for is that: to create surfaces that breathe, that propose questions and that transform the look.

Field of Joy - Oil on canvas, 2025

Q: Texture plays a big role in your work. What draws you to rough, tactile surfaces?

A: The texture, without a doubt, is one of the fundamental elements in my work. Since the beginning of my artistic process, I have been deeply attracted by the surfaces that invite not only to be seen, but almost touched with the gaze. This attraction comes, in large part, from the close observation of the human body and plant structures. It was that observation that allowed me to discover a visual and symbolic link between both dimensions, between the skin and the bark, between the inside and the outside.

In my first works, when I began to explore that relationship, my approach to plant textures was much more literal. 

I tried to accurately imitate what I saw in my references: the patterns of the leaves, the cracks of the bark, the nuances on the surface of a fruit. It was a formal, almost technical search that helped me understand the complexity of those organic structures. But over time, that approach changed. And it was the very act of painting that led me to that transformation.

The pictorial process has a life of its own. As you progress in a painting, it requires you to make decisions, test, correct, let yourself go. I realized that that absolute fidelity to the reference did not always work within the language of the work. There were times when the most faithful visually was what least fit compositionally. Then I began to allow the textures to arise from the internal need of the painting, rather than from the will to represent. And that's when the surfaces began to become richer, more complex, more authentic.

Today, the textures I develop have a much more sensory and expressive charge. They are the result of a constant tension between the technical and the intuitive. I use fillings, glazing, scraping, overlays... Each resource has a motive, whether structural or emotional. Because everything influences the process: from the most pragmatic — such as the consistency of the oil, the drying, the type of brush — to the most subjective, such as a mood, background music, a physical or sensory memory.

Tactile interests me because it connects the painting with the viewer's body. It is not only about representing textures, but also about provoking a physical experience through the surface of the canvas. I want those who observe my works to feel that they can go through them with their eyes as if they were brushing them with their fingers. That experience of closeness, of intimacy with matter, seems deeply human to me.

In short, the rough, dense, or fragmented surfaces that appear in my works are not just a visual issue. They are part of the deep language of painting. They talk about the organic, the imperfect, the living. And, above all, of that constant transformation that occurs when one truly gives oneself to the process.

Q: "Field of Joy" feels lighter, more floating. What shifted in you when making that piece?

A: "Field of Joy" undoubtedly marked a turning point in my way of understanding painting and my own limits within pictorial language. While working on this work, something changed in my perception: it was as if a new, freer, more playful space was opened, where the previous rules — those that I had built around the body, matter, and the organic — began to become more flexible.

I wouldn't know how to say precisely when or how this change happened, but what I am clear about is that it happened. And it was transformative. For a long time I thought of my work as an exploration closely linked to the texture, to the tactile, to the density of the body as a landscape. But in this piece, I suddenly felt that I could release some of that density, without losing depth. I felt that I could work with the floating, the ephemeral, the fragmentary... and that that could also be fertile, emotional, powerful.

What is revealed in "Field of Joy" is a new way of looking at reality. One where I no longer need the body to be completely present to talk about it. Where the elements I use to compose do not have to refer directly to the human or the plant, but can expand to any other place in the visual or symbolic universe that I am able to understand. It is as if I had discovered a kind of more open, more versatile code, in which I can move more freely.

And with that opening also came a feeling of joy, of lightness, of renewed curiosity. The title "Field of Joy" is not accidental: it reflects that more playful energy that I felt when doing the piece. I allowed myself to experiment without clinging so much to a structure or a closed language. I let the paint take me to less heavy, brighter, almost weightless areas.

The most interesting thing is that this transformation did not arise from a rational decision. It was not something I planned or consciously sought. It was something that appeared in the process, that was imposed naturally. 

And there I understood something important: that pictorial language also evolves alone, in its own way, and that part of my task as an artist is to know how to recognize that movement when it occurs, although I can't always explain it. With this work I feel that a new stage has opened in my work. A stage where I can continue to investigate what has always interested me — the body, the organic, the symbolic — but from another perspective, with other nuances. And that's perhaps the most exciting thing about painting: that just when you think you already know where you're going, something changes. And then everything starts again.

Embrace - Oil on canvas, 2022

Q: You’re now based in Andalusia. Has the environment there changed the way you work — in color, material, or rhythm?

A: Without a doubt, the environment profoundly influences the way one works, although sometimes those changes are more subtle or reveal themselves over time. The experiences of life transform you — whether for better or for worse — and places have the power to modify you from within. In my case, Andalusia has represented a stage of openness, of contact with another energy and with another way of inhabiting the world.

Living here has allowed me to experience a different relationship with the rhythm of life and, therefore, also with the rhythm of painting. There is something in the light, in the architecture, in the way time moves, that invites you to take things more calmly, but also with more presence. The climate, the colors of the landscapes, the warmth of the natural environment... All that, unintentionally, is entering the palette, in the atmospheres, in the silences that the painting leaves. But beyond the visual, what has touched me most about Andalusia is its people. There is a very authentic quality in relationships here. People welcome you right away, invite you to their homes, make you part of their family without filters or pretensions. 

That human warmth has affected me in a very direct way, because I firmly believe that art is not nourished only by the study or the workshop, but by the emotional environment that surrounds you. And when that environment is affectionate, sincere, and open, ideas flow with another energy.

In that sense, I do feel that my painting has changed since I'm here. Not necessarily in drastic terms, but in the subtle: in the nuances of color, in the way of breathing the composition, in the way in which I allow myself to address certain subjects without so much rigidity. Andalusia has not only given me a place to work, but an emotional space in which I can create with more freedom, more warmth, and more listening. And that, for me, is essential for the work to grow with truth.