PAINTER. MALLORCA. SPAIN.
My name is Alejandro Javaloyas and I’m 34. I was born to a catholic family in Mallorca, a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea. My practice explores the tension between freedom and disproportionate control, as well as the transformative journey that occurs between the two of them.
I was diagnosed with OCD and giftedness at the age of 6, and always knew I was gay. In school I was a weirdo, never fit in. Drawing soon became my only mechanism to escape. I always felt an other-worldliness when painting, drawing, and collaging. Making art made me feel at peace with myself from a very early age.
In real life, I’m an introvert, a rather shy person. While it is often very difficult for me to freely express how I feel in public, it’s certainly easier for me to do so through painting. That’s why my abstract landscapes are very visceral, with intense mark-making and surface scratching. Painting feels liberating and therapeutic to me.
My studio is a beautiful and very bright apartment in the city center of Toulouse. The building used to be a hotel until the end of the 50s and I love the common areas because they look like the set of a David Lynch movie. It also has a massive window from which I have views on the Garonne river.
Once Piet Mondrian said, “art is the path to being spiritual.” I couldn’t agree more.