Federico Guzman
b. 1964, Spain
Our way to grow plants is to cultivate one at a time, each single plant separate from the others. When you mix plants it does not look like agriculture but wild nature, but it is then that everything regenerates everything else and it becomes a healthy situation for plants. Something similar happens in the way we draw. These drawings grow in co-operation with other drawings. They are plants that draw in co-operation with us. These are drawings of plants with many different names, according to light, sound and season of the year. (In Limerick: rowan, apple, potato, mistletoe, shamrock, hazel and oak.) Irish trees and shrubs, drawings we grow, drawings we cook, we smoke, we drink. Plants with which we paint ourselves. Drawings growing branches, green leaves, growing cars, trumpets, butterflies, people, ghosts and the Shannon river. Sweet drawings, bitter drawings, cannot be understood without each other. ‘They are plants that poison and plants that heal.’
(Text: friends + neighbours catalogue, 2000)
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