by Alberto Lenz

I am often asked when I decided to become an artist. I answer that I didn't decide, I simply assumed it. To dedicate oneself to art is not something that one decides It is something that explodes from within, emerging from our entrails to kiss us on the forehead. By way of the kiss it leaves us an indelible mark. Herman Hesse describes it very well: it leaves on our foreheads the mark of Cain.

The way I discovered that I was an artist was by drawing. As a child I spent hours sketching in the white notebooks my mother bought me. I was always lying on the floor, or crouched over a desk, surrounded by my pencils and crayons, while listening to my sisters play outside the house. I always preferred drawing to playing hide-and-seek or jumping rope. Now, in this latest stage of my life, I am still lying on the floor surrounded by my notebooks, pencils and crayons, while listening to my granddaughters play.

Over the years, I have made hundreds of drawings. Some I have kept, others I have given away or simply lost. Poor things, they pile up forgotten, hidden in drawers. Drawings are often the forgotten products of our creativity.

Years ago, however, I met a great artist who based his important career and his well-deserved fame on his drawings: José Luis Cuevas. A generous man, a fleeting but close friend, Cuevas taught me to value my drawings. He also showed me the beauty of the small format: why make works of two meters by two meters, when in a space of twenty by twenty centimeters you can build a world.

Since then, I have dedicated myself, in a continuous and concentrated way, to drawing. My professional life revolves around my drawings. Several series of works on paper have emerged and have received different names: "Connections," "Sequences," "Sudokus," "Mocambo." And although in the art world they are not appreciated and valued in the same way as works of painting or sculpture, I stubbornly persist in my task of building worlds in four hundred square centimeters

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Alberto Lenz is an artist living in San Miguel de Allende dedicated to sculpture, painting and architecture. Recently, he is also working on the design of jewelry and textiles, under his XIDO-Estudio brand.

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