Meet Mauricio Torrescano

We were lucky to catch up with Mauricio Torrescano recently and have shared our conversation below.

Mauricio, so good to have you with us today. We’ve got so much planned, so let’s jump right into it. We live in such a diverse world, and in many ways the world is getting better and more understanding but it’s far from perfect. There are so many times where folks find themselves in rooms or situations where they are the only ones that look like them – that might mean being the only woman of color in the room or the only person who grew up in a certain environment etc. Can you talk to us about how you’ve managed to thrive even in situations where you were the only one in the room?
Today almost everything is already seen or invented, and it is very difficult to do something different that breaks the known stereotypes since our capacity for wonder is less every day, creating higher standards.

Speaking of art history, artistic techniques are hundreds of years old among us, even the most recent ones, such as the invention of the airbrush, are just over 100 years old. Painting and sculpture have been always separated, only united by mixed techniques.

Since 1993 I began to develop the only direct technique in a single material which is painting and sculpture at the same time, modeling clay(plastilin) is the link that unites these two disciplines into one, it is a base material for sculpture, but since it has color it can be applied like paint, characteristics that allow the creation of two-dimensional artworks as if it were oil painting with textures, reliefs, controlled volumes not possible only in paint, it is a waterproof material that remains elastic forever, its properties do not change and with a plastic lacquer coating protects it from dust, achieving a work that can last even longer than oil paintings.

However, it has always been perceived as a fragile, disposable childish material or base for sculpture but not a final art material, which made it very difficult to develop my artistic career faster. I had to face not being able to participate in competitions since the correct category did not exist, a gallery representation is very difficult since they cannot categorize you as a painter or sculptor and they do not have a client base or the market because it was non-existent.

Although today I have been able to do many exhibitions and have a presence in media such as TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the web, as today you do me the favor of this space, millions of people have been reached and many have learned how to do the technique with the help of my book The Art of Painting with Plastilin, still there are limitations due to lack of knowledge of it, so I will continue working to disseminate and expand its use.

Answering your question, I have learned to be successful and effective through persistence, believing in myself, and not waiting for someone to discover me and take me by the hand to handle my career, you have to insist day by day, creating your path, and having a strategy. You have to be resilient because is a very complex road, but if you don’t stop insisting, dreams come true.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Something that helps me continue doing art is the satisfaction of seeing the public’s reaction, marveling at what can be created with a material that most of us use as children, having something to contribute to the art world, our life has a limited span, but our contributions is what persists through time, and thinking about it motivates me to continue developing new visual effects such as volume transparencies with a solid material, continue growing my artistic style which I call Fusionism since it fuses the best of art from my point of view, painting and sculpture, various artistic styles, reality with fantasy, past and future.

Now that I have the technical possibilities, my motivation is to imagine what I can create that can impact the audience, and what visual effect has something to contribute, for example before the pandemic, I began a project where I am reinterpreting masterpieces from the art history in 3D to show that everything is possible in this technique, if I can reinterpret a masterpiece at the same level of technical quality then it has to be considered as a definitive art material and to be valued as any other existing art technique.

If you want to learn how to do the technique here´s a link to get the printed book, available digital too on Google books or Apple store:

https://www.amazon.com/ART-PAINTING-PLASTILIN-Plasticine-Plastilina/dp/B08TZK8SQT

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The 3 main qualities that someone requires to be an artist are study, practice, and patience, this last quality is something rare today, thanks to the immediate access we have to knowledge and many things we want through our mobile devices and the internet, we gained many things but we lost patience, we want instant results in general, if we do not have this we lose interest very easily and art is a career that can take longer than even medicine, for example, technical development takes many years of practice, if you think about the time of artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, they did not have so many distractions as we have today and they had the time to study, prepare, practice and develop perfect works of art that continue to amaze us today.

In our time, no one takes 3 years to make an artwork, a lot of contemporary art is based on concepts/objects, I think there is still the possibility of innovating and doing impressive, different things.

My advice would be if you want to be an artist, you must believe in yourself, study, practice, have the passion and dedication as if you wanted to be the best surgeon in the world.

To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
They believed in me from the beginning, no one starts playing the piano as Mozart or painting like Da Vinci, so the support I had from my parents was fundamental, since I was a child they bought me all the artistic materials that I asked them for, they tolerated that I carried my clay and small sculptures everywhere as on vacation, they never criticized me, at least in my presence.

When I told my father about the idea of what I wanted to do with modeling clay, which was to paint as if it were oil paintings, a couple of years before I started doing it, he didn’t say anything to me. When I started to develop the technique years later he confessed to me that at the moment I told him about it he thought how much nonsense I was thinking and that when he saw the final result he was shocked.

That is where the damage that words can do to others becomes very important, let’s not criticize others, cut their ideas or dreams because it is where things arise, if my father had criticized me from the beginning it is possible that I would never have developed the technique, if my mother had not given me her advice on art, love and support none of this would be possible. If the art world appreciate this technique and it continues to grow, keep in mind that it exists thanks to them and their support.

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Mauricio Torrescano

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