Discover the contemporary work of Roman Manrique de Lara

My professional life has revolved around graphic design. MY artistic journey began as a cartoonist of humor cartoons in the magazine "El Terror" del Savoy, 6. Without knowing very well how I specialized in in the design and creativity of labels for the world of food, and in the eighties I participated in in the creativity of countless covers for videos, those were the years of the video club boom. I made my small foray into cinema by drawing the story board for the film script "Tempus Fugit" and I ended up as head of the design department of the advertising agency "Publifax" since I exercised for the next twelve years while I made my foray into the literary world, getting the Calíope publishing house to publish my first novel "Si se fin el tiempo" in 1998, then followed "The Claw of the Bear", "Al compas del chaos", and "The Sharp Sickle of the Moon", all of them published by the Candil publishing house, and by last "Shadows nothing more" digitally edited on Amazon. At the end of my working life I returned to work. I went back to my beginnings of graphic humor and made the humorous cartoons of the weekly newspaper "Aqui" and Now" during the two years of the weekly's life. And I acquired I gained the freedom to express myself artistically as I wanted with retirement. Since then, due to my restless life, I have dedicated myself to painting souls.

Above all, as an artist I am interested in portraiture, although I do not disdain painting any landscape, object, animal or thing that attracts me for infinite reasons (composition, color, theme, etc.) But returning to the portrait, when I stand in front of a blank canvas and begin to sketch the face of the person I intend to capture, I introspect his face that takes me beyond from the simple study of their physiognomy, looking for that peculiarity that makes each of us different, that gesture, that look, that grimace, which says everything about the sitter. I avoid the precise and precious shapes capable of reflecting the brilliance of a pupil, I eliminate it from the start and look for my objective among connected stains until they lead me to the character and I feel that his soul is looking at me from the colorful blurs that I have captured on my canvas , and I know I have reached my goal when I think I know the person portrayed a little better, it is a strange but effective way to contact others.