DANIEL ROIBAL

I would define my work as a space to be, think and feel. The base of my work comes from my first trip to Costa Rica, there i visited for the first time a primary forest and practiced a japanese therapy called Shinrin Yoku (Forest Bathing) that is based in the experience of a conscious walk into the forest. I was amazed by all the nature power you can feel when you begin to be part of the jungle. In some way I felt everything surrounding me was alive, connected and in constant movement. I was totally unable to understand and realize all the things happening around me.

When I speak about natural and conscious spaces I think the base is the word contemplation that for me is the main point of my work. When you are in the forest you realise that everything surrounding you is inestable, it doesn’t have a logic order, it is spontaneous and unpredictable,and it’s not completed, so it is a moving image, you can’t possess it. When you realise that everything the human can do in this spaces is just be there and act as a viewer and let themself be surprised by the beauty that nature can give us, you begin to be conscious of where and when you are at, and in this precise moment, you are part of this space and part of yourself. And that conscious moment of being part of, is what me, as an artist, pretend to do. Speaking about my studio practice I think is a constant evolutive process, my intention is to represent what I feel during this forest bathings and what and my way to understand nature. So in the time of production I like to be the most away possible from the real forest so I can be 100% honest with my feelings and just paint and draw from the feelings I have in my memory and not be attached to any idea of precision and realism at the time of representing the forest. That’s why is a changing process, on the way to the studio I always find different stimuli that make me connect with those ideas in my memory, sometimes is the smell of the day, the raining sound, forest sound playlists… So basically in my studio time I try to create in an imperfect, impermanent and incomplete what I feel in the natural conscious spaces.