A Journey of Precision and Passion
As many of you know, my book is coming out in November, and everyone who bought it through my Kickstarter campaign will be the first to receive it. Right now, I’m deeply engrossed in the painstaking task of layout design, an exercise in absolute precision where every detail, every story, and every image counts. This process has demanded all my attention, pushing my desire to paint and create new works to the back burner. Although I have vibrant ideas for new prints that I’m sure you’ll love, my priority right now is to deliver the book on time.
The Art of Layout
During this arduous process, I’m accompanied by music and podcasts. When laying out and placing text, I prefer calm music that allows me to supervise the content and ensure there are no typographical or continuity errors between pages. However, when I’m editing photos or laying out images, I delight in listening to inspiring stories of incredible people. This time, it was Ferran Adrià who captured my attention.
Ferran Adrià Innovation and Creativity
Ferran Adrià, a world-renowned chef, has made his mark not only in the kitchen but also in academia. Since 2010, he has been collaborating with Harvard University, teaching courses on innovation and creativity in cooking. His work at Harvard focuses on the deconstruction of culinary processes and their application in other disciplines, demonstrating that cooking is both an art and a science.
Adrià, born in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat in 1962, grew up in a humble, working-class neighborhood. In his youth, he dreamed of going to Ibiza, but his life took an unexpected turn during his military service, where he discovered his passion for cooking. Through a series of almost casual events, he ended up at El Bulli, a restaurant that would become a global reference. Initially, he entered El Bulli as a kitchen assistant, but quickly stood out and was named head chef, transforming the place with his innovative approach.
Adrià has a very clear philosophy about creativity and innovation. In haute cuisine, we talk about the avant-garde, and what Ferran was doing was precisely that: innovating. Innovating means creating something new or taking established foundations and giving them your personal touch. That is pure creativity and an art, because it involves the same process an artist goes through before launching their studio: creating for the sake of creation, without the need to make money, but from the heart and the need to express oneself. That’s what Ferran did, and that’s what many of us, as artists, seek to do.
Roller Coasters and Realities
I’ve seen numerous lectures by Adrià, but one in particular left a deep mark on me. At a university, in front of students and professors, Ferran asked how many wanted to be artists. No one raised their hand. Earlier, he had asked how many wanted to be lawyers or scientists, and some raised their hands. It was then that Adrià declared that living off art is really hard without the necessary support. With this, he pointed out that artists have it really tough. Generally, those who want to dedicate themselves to art need another job to survive, as art doesn’t provide a livelihood.
This made me reflect on my own situation. The life of someone who likes to paint, like me, is a roller coaster. It’s a continuous up and down of uncertainty; you never know what the next month will bring, if you’ll have work or not. Here, I want to make one thing clear: when I talk about someone wanting to live off art and how hard it is, I’m referring to someone willing to GIVE IT ALL. Talking about the difficulties from the perspective of someone who does it occasionally or isn’t consistent and hardworking is a waste of time. Here we refer to 24/7, pursuing your element, what really drives you and you would do all the time.
The Exclusivity of Art
Art is a luxury item, something dispensable. It’s not a necessity or something everyone has access to; it’s super exclusive. Exclusive things, on the one hand, are paid very well, but on the other, they have a very small market. This complicates matters, not by the grace of God, but by the very nature of art.
Listening to Ferran Adrià, I understood that difficulties in an artist’s life are not exceptional, but rather the norm. This gave me a new perspective and an inner peace. I realized that my ups and downs are part of the journey, and that these roller coasters are normal. Seeing my position, and recognizing that despite everything, I live off it and do what I really like, allowed me to accept this reality with greater serenity. Adrià made me understand that difficulty is not a sign of failure but an inherent part of the artistic journey.
I want to emphasize that, although I’m an internationally known artist, my life is not without its ups and downs. We all have ups and downs, we all have to surf the waves of life as best we can, but independent artists have it a thousand times tougher. On the one hand, we have the satisfaction that every month we might receive an incredible job, something that a conventional Monday-to-Friday job with a fixed salary doesn’t offer. There are no surprises in that type of job; you know exactly what’s there. But on the other hand, we also face the uncertainty that, perhaps, we spend two or three months without receiving anything and have to live off savings, which may have been significantly reduced after paying the crazy taxes we have in this country, but that’s a topic for another discussion.
In my case, I no longer usually have periods without work because I’ve been working very hard for a long time, and today I’m reaping the rewards. I thank life every day and, above all, I thank myself for the hard work I’m doing. In a way, I deserve this and much more. There have been very tough moments, putting a lot out of my own pocket, something Ferran Adrià also explains in many of his lectures and with which I deeply identify. Thanks to that perseverance and dedication, those moments of uncertainty are increasingly less frequent.
However, I still see people jumping on the bandwagon of wanting to be an artist. I come across people who overnight want to achieve artist status. I observe their Instagrams and their intentions from a distance, and from my point of view, considering what it has cost me to get here, I see how quickly they want to go and how wrong they are. Many of them confuse the fact that they like to do something or have discovered a new passion, something totally legitimate and understandable. At a point in their life, they are attracted to doing what they never dared to do, and that’s fine. But the colossal and gigantic mistake is wanting to reap the rewards overnight once they understand that’s what they want to do. They get desperate and curse when, after 2, 3, 5, or 6 years, they have neither luck nor work.
That thought is completely wrong because very few people, after relatively little time in something, have touched the sky and live off it. The norm is to spend years, even decades, chipping away. So when I see them, they amuse me. But well, in the end, if you don’t have a passion for what you do, sooner or later these people give up. Enduring that uncertainty and suffocating feeling for so long can only be managed if the feeling of love for what you do is so high that it eclipses any other sensation.
Surfing the Waves
So from here, I want to thank Ferran Adrià for his talks, his knowledge, and his example. Without further ado, I will continue to give my best, within the ups and downs. The point is not to seek the flattest possible path but to surf the best way we know how. Uncertainty is real and natural, and it’s part of the challenge and beauty of living off art.
Thanks for reading and for your constant support.
Saturno