José Naranjo

Do you feel a sense of calm looking at José Naranjo’s paintings, or a prickly sense… something is about happen, and it may not be good?  Muted colors and meandering waterways would ordinarily be a bit meh, but there’s an edginess that electrifies these landscapes. The high vantage point, rivers swollen to the point of flooding, the pinkish cast of an incoming storm on the horizon signal “but wait, there’s more to come.”  Look at how Naranjo treats the surface:  Flattened, smooth, no dimensional brush strokes, but silver leaf catches the light, changing as you move position, an apt metaphor to suggest turmoil under a seemingly mirror-like body of water.  I like how the sense of geometry and perspective feel intellectual, but then Naranjo aggressively carves into the surface, chiseling out slivers, exposing what lies beneath, raw and exposed.

José Naranjo is a painter and professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Seville. Discover more of José Naranjo’s work:  https://www.instagram.com/jnaranjoferrari/