Noir paintings

Last weekend, on my birthday in fact (nice time for an epiphany), I found this artist, Fabian Perez (Argentinian born artist now living in Los Angeles) in a local gallery. I was impressed enough about the work of Perez I saw that I took a leaflet (where I found the information about him being from Argentina and living in LA), even though I cannot afford one single painting. The people at the gallery could tell about ten seconds and they ignored me completely, but I could still enjoy the aesthetic of it. I would love to be wealthy enough to buy one, or better still: I wish I could be selling these paintings for a job. This is what came to my mind immediately when I saw them: I want to spend my days here, being paid to watch them, to tell the customers why they should own one, why this is great stuff.

I am not really an art connoisseur, in fact I am pretty much of a philistine. But when I love pictural art, I love it immensely and without compromission. The universe Fabian Perez paints is often an old fashioned one, filled with glamorous and grim nostalgia. It is a world of dim lights and growing shadows, of femmes fatales (many, many of them), hardboiled guys, sinister men, all chain smoking and hard drinking. It is the world of Eros and Thanatos. It is, in a nutshell, the universe of crime fiction from old pulp magazines, with a latin twist. The painting I uploaded here is called Gathering at Los Brujas, and this could be the title of a novel. Like for the Detective Tales cover I upload every month, the work of Fabian Perez set my imagination on fire. I wish I could have words that were as eloquent as these images, that could create an atmosphere as efficiently, with such rich colours and character. If I ever write the great crime fiction novel from Québec, I want an artist like him to draw the cover, although I wonder if his latin world can work with the Northern one I come from. In any case, I will upload more of his works here, just like I do with Detective Tales.