Motionless in light, but dancing,
Your movement in the quietness it raises
in the climate of vertigo it clings to,
freezing not the flight, but the instant.
OCTAVIO PAZ
No wonder a world-class artist could hint at the spirit of his own works and ends up reinventing his history. When a creator like Mariano Cobo, seasoned in the brass and the wood, in burins and engravings, who every so often splays ideas in oil, has his mind made up to butt in abstract fields and in delicate watercolors, then physical locations are a reflection enriched by time, explored until they are melt into the landscapes. As if it were a tough job to do to pick examples out of people and objects, yet the need to turn art around in its purest state arises, the quest of color for color comes in. And it’s in this coherent passion when a series of superb images emerges, of landscapes and acts, motivated by Cobian philosophy.
Then out of this series of watercolors the blending of spiritual and material context is extracted, the lineal stability with no rules his identity nourishes from.
The gesture of revealed painting spills over to the outer space like some sort of visual touch in which the calm instant is guessed. That’s the right time for the totality of expected developments, as if everybody were waiting for that to happen in terms of tenderness.
These creations are born out of the will and the drive of his sensitivity, a universe that does not rule daily life out. It’s seen in these seascapes, in these landscapes that boast a certain elegant order, a way of wielding the paintbrush and interpreting things in which wonders, aspirations, achievements and craving for life come to pass.
The visitor delves into his painting, absorbs the blue shades, the bright light. In his artistic intensity, Mariano Cobo reinvents thousands of polychromatic effects. Not only those that stand for gracious strokes and he brings back to life, but those purest ones that resound and pulsate on the paper.
Cobo’s painting is like painting on consciousness. A dark sunset scene in which the yellowish sunrays come shining through bears that out once again.
Cobo’s watercolors give no explanations; they only demand answers.
Elvira Rilova
Art Historian
