Manuel Mendive. I feel bound to this island

My pillars are the yoruba religion, faith, mysticism, truth, kindness, sweetness, anguish, the land and life.

I like switching the medium and, if it were possible, maybe one day I’d like to paint over air and smoke. It is a way to make the best use of this space: life.

I’ve been always interested in painting on the skin: it is not anything new. As it is known, skin was used for this purpose in ancient cultures. I wanted to do this but in another way: that my works and imagination emerged from the body of a human being. In other words: to create another being. It is something ephemeral but everything is so too…at the end, there remains only the memory, only if you can remember.

The skin is beautiful. It has a most lovely texture: it is life.

Not only in performance but even when I do drawing, I want the audience to understand what I am saying, so I am talking. That is painting: to say things and also feel and transmit them. I feel excited by the simple observer, the one that doesn’t know about art but gets shuddered at it.

On the skin is something else. You need to see the body; that is the one that inspires you and the features of that anatomy evoke images. Maybe it is the very energy of the human body that guides you in the process. Every body is one of a kind and all have a different energy…and a different strength. I choose the bodies: not all have to be slender. Some could be fatter, younger or older. There is beauty everywhere.

My responsibility is to do a good work, a decent one and worthy to my eyes and to the eyes of the people at home and outside. I don’t feel it as a burden to have that responsibility. On the contrary, it is a great joy for me that everyone knows that I am not in this world for nothing. I am here because I have things to say and do.