Childhood is adventure. It’s skinned knees, summers spent in swimsuits, unsupervised exploration in nature, running down to the beach with a barking dog at your side. Childhood is untethered joy and discovery, and it smiles back at you in the newest work of Jose Antonio Bernad.
The Plunge, oil on linen mounted on ACM, 59 x 37 4/5”The Spanish painter will be showing his newest pieces beginning March 1 at RJD Gallery in Romeo, Michigan. The solo exhibition, titled A Journey of Artistic Reverie, will have paintings that show the adventurous lives of children as they explore the world around them. The places these figures inhabit are beautiful and full of mystery, and yet there are also elements of mild danger. A boy’s dog hunches down to investigate an unseen presence, a young girl watches a car emerge from the mist, another girl hovers strangely over a lake behind a cluster of birds, a balloon escapes a child’s hand and flees to the sky, a glow radiates from beneath the surface of a lake—the stakes are low in these scenes, but what is adventure without a little danger?
Quiet Glow, oil on canvas, 319/10 x 233/5”
“The worlds depicted in these paintings are predominantly creatively developed and imagined,” the artist says. “That said, anything can set off those moments of imaginative exploration—a memory, a longing, a feeling, etc. Much like memories themselves, these [paintings] are part real and part imagined.”
Like memories, the paintings have a faintly romantic sheen to them. The textures are smooth, and the colors are bright and playful. “The emotional power of color is profound, and it has been a key element of expression used by artists across art history,” Bernad says. “Like the sun, color influences and impacts our lives. I like exploring harmonious relationships between colors and use it as a tool to convey feelings and set a general mood to the work. Sometimes it can be a means of drawing attention to a certain figure or element in the composition.”
The Chase, oil on wood panel, 29½ x 47¼”
Asked about the surreal qualities of the images, Bernad says he creates within his own style, though magical realism begins to touch upon what he is creating. “While I don’t specifically set out to create within a certain genre, I think it could be a fitting definition,” he adds. “It is definitely a genre I enjoy very much as a viewer (whether in painting, literature, cinema).”
In the piece Uplifted, a young girl seems to float behind a murmuration of small birds. Bernad paints 15 different birds in, presumably, seven or eight different species, which gives the cluster of birds a rainbow-like streak of color. The girl, equally as bright, wears a pink sweater with a bluish-green skirt. “Quite often, images emerge from mysterious sources, mainly driven by the emotion I want to convey. Upliftedtries to capture that weightlessness which birds experience when carried by the wind,” the artist says. “The girl is immersed in the same ethereal sensation while chasing after something as elusive as a flock of birds. The freedom of flight, and the fleeting moments of escape from one’s own daily existence and responsibility may or may not be possible.”
The Search, oil on wood panel, 51 1/5 x 35"
The Road Ahead, oil on wood panel, 47¼ x 26¾"
In the painting The Plunge, Bernad shows a boy with outstretched arms standing on the edge of a rock over the ocean. His thin arms and stick-like legs allow him to make a striking image against the gloomy sky that fills the air behind him. “The boy on top of the rock, with his arms outstretched like wings, mirrors the sensation of the seagull flying below. I envision him attempting to capture that sense of freedom,” Bernad says. 
Uplifted, oil on wood panel, 59 x 381/5"
Although the menagerie of birds appears in at least two paintings, the worlds of his paintings don’t appear to be linked, which he confirms, though he admits that all the paintings are open to discussion by viewers. “While each painting presents its own unique world and narrative, they all revolve around a few general notions of chasing and searching,” he says. “However, I like paintings that offer multiple readings and interpretations, and that is what I try to do, to allow the observer to craft their own narrative.”
Birds Watching, oil on linen mounted on ACM panel, 31½ x 204/5"
Joi Jackson Perle, RJD’s gallery director, notes that the new paintings will take viewers on the adventures of their subjects. “To delight in one’s inner child is a playful journey in which we all indulge,” Perle says. “To bring that spark of creative joy to a fully developed vision on a canvas is a gift few of us possess. Jose Antonio Bernad has that gift; his works are nurtured in his imagination and brought forth in colorful moments of artistic reverie—silent dreamlike stories that whisper to our own inner child.”
The show will remain on view through April 4 in Michigan. —
RJD Gallery 227 North Main Street • Romeo, MI 48065 • (586) 281-3613 • www.rjdgallery.com
Powered by Froala Editor
