"Personally art is just therapy for me. When it goes out into the world, when it leaves me and becomes the world's art, it becomes this other thing. Back in the mid 2000s when I first started making a living as an artist, I was pigeonholed into this surrealist category. But I did not feel it encompassed what I was creating."
"I was working to escape my own reality, through narratives that left me personally feeling positive regarding the issues I was painting about. The more and more I was told my work was surrealist, the more I wanted to find a place it did make sense. Art has a job to do. For me as the artist, first and foremost it has to provoke and awaken me, but then when it leaves the studio it has to take people somewhere too."
Gil draws on nostalgia as the origin of imagination and as a means of escape. Narrative escapism describes paintings that channel personal vulnerability rather than subconscious surrealism. The works pour Gil's story into imagery that homes in on feelings, attachments, and paranoias. The paintings depict the realities Gil visits to make sense of life, including good, less good, and misunderstood moments. Art functions as therapy for Gil, and when shared it becomes something else that must provoke and awaken, open a door, and stimulate thought in viewers.
Read at Hi-Fructose Magazine - The New Contemporary Art Magazine
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