Context

These paintings span the period from my time as a student in London until the first years of my return to Chile, my country of birth, after 17 years in exile in England.

The paintings titled ‘Pagan Angel’ and ‘Walking on Air’ are two of a number of initial works during my period as a student in England which, through their making as I remember, allowed me to imagine and begin to understand the significance that painting would have in my life. These were times of great hope, dedication and camaraderie in the studios at the Chelsea School of Art and later at Camberwell College of Art, both places where I spent long working days with fellow students, discussing and sharing ideas as well as the knowledge and skills of our craft. It was a process of peer teaching and learning in which our tutors, the majority of whom were already established artists, chose to intervene very little.

From that point, colour and drawing became for me essential resources that went hand-in-hand with a series of recurrent themes that I had been developing prior to landing in Latin America. was just becoming aware of what would in time be a constant preoccupation: the question of representation in painting.