Visual Strolls

seasonal residency

Visual Strolls is a residency space for artists who share an affinity for landscapes and wilderness, inner and outer. Foresta is changing with every season as the real forest does. In cyclical circularity it celebrates changing seasons of nature and of our lives. As snow melts away, as days grow longer, as leaves change colour, as they fly with the wind, as stillness settles in, as warmth returns, as birds cross continents — at the turn of each seasonal moment we invite a different artist to bring a new time of the year to Foresta by creating a portrait of time that later becomes part of the permanent Museum of Seasons.

The author of spring 2017 portrait of Foresta is Jesus Cisneros. Jesus is an author, illustrator, and book-creator based in Zaragoza. We are fascinated and touched by the poetry, sensitivity, music and metaphors of his visual language. Below you will find a selection of images from our favourite books of Jesus (El Sueño, Cuentos de Shakespeare, Ramon, Il Respiro del Vento, and others). 

Spring 2017 Portrait

Alicia en el bosque
Me gustan las montañas de Shi Tao y las flores amarillas que dibujaba Federico García Lorca. De la ciudad me gustan sobre todo los árboles, los fresnos asomados al Ebro en Zaragoza, las jacarandas que en la Ciudad de México iluminan marzo. Quizás, como Marcovaldo, todos somos extranjeros, exiliados en la Ciudad, siempre con nostalgia de un Bosque lejano. Tal vez por eso en mis cuadernos hay dibujos de plantas y hojas y flores. Añoranza de cuando éramos bosque.
En A través del espejo, Alicia entra en una arboleda donde (ya se lo había advertido el mosquito bromista y triste) las cosas no tienen nombre. Alicia se abraza a un cervatillo que no sabe que es un cervatillo y que la mira con ojos enormes pero sin miedo. Así van unidos hasta que salen del bosque: «—¡Soy un cervatillo!—gritó con alegría—. Y … ¡Madre mía! ¡Si tú eres una cría humana!—. Con una repentina expresión de alarma en los hermosos ojos pardos, el Cervatillo salió disparado al galope y un instante después había desaparecido».
Al salir del bosque Alicia recuperó su nombre, pero se sintió muy triste al ver alejarse al cervatillo. Después de una separación queda la melancolía y, también, la esperanza del reencuentro. Algo quizá de este anhelo hay en el ejercicio del dibujo, en la búsqueda de imágenes en ese espejo que es el papel en blanco.

Alice in the woods
I like the mountains of Shi Tao and the yellow flowers that Federico García Lorca used to draw. In the city I especially like the trees, the ash trees appearing at the Ebro in Zaragoza, the jacarandas that in Mexico City illuminate the month of March. Perhaps, like Marcovaldo, we are all foreigners, exiled in the City, always with nostalgia for a distant Forest. Maybe that's why in my notebooks there are drawings of plants and leaves and flowers. Longing for the time when we were woods.
In Through the Looking Glass, Alice enters a grove where (she had already been warned about it by the teasing and sad mosquito) things have no name. Alice embraces a fawn that does not know he is a fawn and looks at her with huge eyes but without fear. So they go together until they come out of the forest: «"I'm a fawn!”- he exclaims joyfully. “And, oh dear! You are a human child!” With a sudden expression of alarm in his beautiful brown eyes, the Fawn went off galloping and disappeared a moment later.»
On leaving the forest Alice regained her name, but she felt very sad to see the fawn go away. After separation, there is melancholy and, also, the hope of reunion. Perhaps something of this yearning is in the exercise of drawing, in the search for images in that mirror that is a blank paper.

About Visual Strolls

Visual Strolls is not only an online gallery, an exhibition room, a portrait into the work of the invited artist. It is also a part of our long-term research, understanding arts and creativity as forces that change human states of attention in manifold ways, as forms of cognition and perception, divergent perspectives and poetry of vision, access to intuition and imagination, and empowerment for conscious creation of culture. You can read more about Art into Life research here.

Cover image: Jesus Cisneros