Juan Cristobal Pinochet, the man behind the art
Journey and career
Juan Cristobal Pinochet was born in Chile in 1960, he arrived in Canada at the age of 17, Quebec became his new adopted city, and he completed his high school and college studies at old capital Petit Seminaire.
Despite the fact that he did his university studies in marketing and communication at Ottawa University, he regularly attended the drawing and painting academy run by his mother Silvia Araya in Quebec City, leaving his great passion for painting take its course.
In his early twenties he became a member of Old Quebec portrait artists, he attended live model workshops and conducted courses at his mother’s academy whenever he had the chance.
See outstanding works
Highlights
He has been chosen three times to participate in the International Pastel Artist Invitational Exhibition of Taiwan. He also was the honor guest at the International Biannual Pastel Salon in Spain in 2019.
Other distinctions and implications
Artistic approach
Classic journey
Juan Cristobal comes from a Fine Arts trained artists family; the landscape and the classical portrait influenced an important part of his career.
His career began with his summers spent painting portraits in old Quebec. During ten seasons, between the ages of 20 and 29, he began his apprenticeship in realism using pastel. He observes his subjects and develops his skills in capturing likeness.
His interest in painting landscape is motivated by his great admiration towards the work of Claude Monet as well as that of the East Coast and California American artist. As them, he also wants to translate light and color into his work. The great open-air painters of the previous generation influenced him to feed himself directly from the landscape. Artist and friend Francesco Iacurto gave him the taste for the outdoor painting, as he was at the time by Emile Gruppé (Rockport, Massachussets).
Subsequently, various subjects are added to this classic approach; chiaroscuro still-lives, life scenes, and cityscapes with the particular challenge of translating evening light.
Cristobal produced thousands of paintings on various subjects from a classical romantic, impressionist and post-impressionist perspective.
Contemporary journey
During the last decade he lets himself be inhabited by new challenges, to develop his art vision through creativity towards a more contemporary art.
This approach implies a realism detachment towards a partial representational painting and occasionally towards a more abstract composition.
He challenges himself to take up the same subjects matter; landscape, cityscapes, portraits, nudes, still lives, florals and others.
This time, he executes his paintings from a different perspective, notably with greater chromatic freedom and expressive paint manipulation.
He works by series making an extra effort on the technique variations from one collection to another, giving to each of them their own artistic personality.
Its approach under this new vision is more contemporary, as well as the medium technical management through the industry vast choice of new products. In this process, he particularly uses acrylics and mix media, that allows him more flexibility and possibilities.
Cristobal has always respected his great curiosity and his desire for discovery without ever stagnating or appropriating a style or pattern in painting. He always needed new challenges and never compromised. His art expresses those personality traits that characterize him well; curious and daring without failure fear and always looking ahead, optimistic, patient and persevering.
