Fernando has published his Manifesto “Paintings for a new era of Innocence” in the latest edition of the Flux Review, London.
Lisa Gray, editor of the Flux Review writes:
“Introspective yet defiantly expressive, Fernando Velázquez offers a manifesto for our age. In the New Era of Innocence, he calls painting and act of resistance, a deliberate slowing down in a world obsessed with speed and certainty. His canvasses reveal mental landscapes where doubt, fragility and transformation coexist, creating moments of stillness in the midst of modern turbulence”
MANIFESTO
Paintings for a new era of Innocence
I believe in painting as an act of resistance.
Resistance to speed.
Resistance to easy answers.
I believe that art, like nature, is built upon structure, but lives in its transformation.
What happens when Bach loses order?
When logic disappears from music?
When nature turns wild, erratic, unpredictable?
Chaos is terrifying, but it is also fertile ground.
We live in a world obsessed with control.
Numbers, data, algorithms. We live surrounded by false truths, crumbling structures, collapsing certainty. There is no solid ground beneath our feet.
I paint to create space within this collapse. I aim to create space for the invisible.
Space for resonance.
Space for human thought, fragile and free.
On Nature
Nature today is beautiful, threatening, overwhelming, and out of our control.
But a new kind of beauty is also emerging.
Nature and technology are fusing.
Artificial intelligence is becoming organic.
Boundaries blur.
Change is violent, unstoppable.
I respond with speed.
With anxiety.
With the urgency of not-knowing.
My paintings are mental landscapes, entities where doubt lives and questions remain unanswered.
On Inspiration
Forget the old ideas of inspiration.
Inspiration is a shift in heart rate.
A sharpness of breath.
A signal that something unknown has appeared.
I seek connections I cannot explain.
I move like someone entering a dark cave with a small torch,
guessing the path, illuminating fragments, feeling my way forward with imagination and instinct.
On Light & Technique
Light is my language.
But not the light of a sky or a sunset.
Light as contrast.
Light as tension.
Light as movement against stillness.
Busy areas clash with silence.
Rapid passages against calm spaces.
Sharp diagonals cutting through curves.
Painting is wind, energy, friction.
Painting is a storm building at the edge of vision.
On Meaning
I do not want to explain.
I want to offer a trace, a perfume left in the mind of the viewer.
I want people to stand alone before the work, as I do.
No guide.
No holding of hands.
Art is not there to comfort.
It is there to awaken.
The viewer completes the work.
On The Artist Today
A new kind of artist is emerging, shaped by a changing world.
Participation will matter.
Technology will expand the borders of art.
But I remain committed to the slowness of the hand.
To the preservation of the physical act of painting.
To the mystery of materials.
Painting may become obsolete.
Let it.
It will return, transformed, raw, human again.
Artists will always speak of the same things:
life, death, love, fear, the human condition.
Everything else is noise.
Fernando Velázquez
2025
