Articles
CONTRERAS CANALIZOS’S ART
By Berta Taracena, Historian and Art Critic, member of THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ART CRITICS; and ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONALE DES CRITIQUES D´ART.
GOLF COURSES IN CONTRERAS CANALIZOS’S ART
The vast golf courses of plain grass that constitute the game area of this fascinating sport, is one of the principal themes in Rafael Contreras Canalizo’s paintings. This notable Mexican artist is one of the few plastic creators that we know of, who is dedicated to mold with lines and colors all his work.
As we all know, golf is the national sport in Scotland and it contains analogies with other old ball games, which challenge the human skills physically, intellectually and emotionally, in order to achieve high, difficult and arduous goals.
Due to this, the golf landscapes where this sport is developed, are splendid grounds which must have 18 holes, with a distance of 100 to 500 meters between each other, furrowed of natural and artificial obstacles that the sportsman should be able to overcome. All these amazing external and internal elements have become a challenge to Contreras Canalizo, who with his magical brush captures golf courses situated in beautiful landscapes all over the world.
We can see in these pages excellent panoramas of diverse landscapes like The Club de Golf La Hacienda (The Hacienda Golf Club), hole 2, Deacon’s Lodge Breeze Point, Minnesota (USA), Coeur de Alene Resort, Idaho (USA) and the Gran Reserva Ixtapan de la Sal Country Club (The Great Reserve Ixtapan de la Sal ) hole 14), which captures the spectator’s gaze with the freshness of his greens, and the crystalline of his gold, and his silvers in the transparency of the sky, the clouds, the horizons and the waters.
The same thing happens with paintings like the floweriness field of the Club de GolfLa Hacienda , the Playa Car of the Riviera Maya and Los Encinos (State of Mexico), where the artist finely details the foreground of the golf courses and shows up clearly a second level of variable deepness that is not something blurred, like a theatre curtain, but something that embraces the great space, the ampleness, the imposingness emphasizing in each painting the seal of vital energy.
In golf, like in other areas of the human effort, for example art, politics and science, wins the one who makes the course with the less number of strokes. The player must choose for each hole the right club, according to the nature of the terrain, like everything in life, like everything that is great, because it is a lot of effort.
THE UNITY OF VISION
The magic symbolism of the Golf Courses transmit the sensation of fulfilled task in each one of their holes, this is Rafael Contreras Canalizo’s favorite topic.
This thought comes from a great painter of clean and certain lines and vibrant and luminous blending of colors.
Contreras Canalizo has been gifted to express in such a wonderful way everything around him. It can be a human figure, objects, nature and architecture, plants, animals and other elements in the cosmos.
He sums up in the landscape art not only all his uneasiness of investigate new concepts and techniques, but also his love and respect for history and geography.
Regardless ephemeral tendencies, this artist follows a path in a poetic and flexible expression, standing out aspects of the important movements of his time, for which he has a significant and brilliant work.
This allows him to innovate the landscape, giving the sensation of a new discovered world seen by the very first time.
Rafael’s academic backgrounds come from the contemplation of the great landscape pieces of art, an idea of totality, according to the totality of vision. That is to say, the purpose of this artist is to interpret and represent reality, not only as a sum of uncountable details that coexist and are considered separately, but as a whole optic unit inside of which no fragment or piece leaves out a shade of color.
This notion of totality represents all his work, giving it a non common sense of originality and vanguardism. And as we mentioned before, he brings out the great series of the Golf Courses in which with only a glance the images don’t become other images, just like it happens in the master pieces as La Hacienda and Los Encinos (Edomex) Mexico and in the United States, Alabama, Pine Hill (Southern New Jersey), The Gailes Course (Lakewood Shores in Oscoda), Inverness Club (Toledo, Ohio), Prairie Dunes Country Club (Hutchinson, Kansas), Shanty Creek (Lake Bellarie, Mich.) and other pieces painted in recent dates (2003-2005), examples of a diverse and spectacular geography, each field with the magic of its symbolism.
Rafael Contreras Canalizo is an artist who is close to the next modern scientist, because of his thoroughly exploration of everything he sees and his technical skills to express it. All this is mixed proportionally in a philosophical declaration.
Passion for golf
Golf in Mexico has been part of the social, sport, cultural and even political history of the country; this is why this sport is considered to be not only an important activity, but also polyvalent, as well as popular. Usually, golf tournaments (competitions among the best national and international players) include several activities, such as concerts, dances, dinners, commemorating ceremonies, casino nights, competitions and some other celebrations commonly crowded and pleasant for the competitors.
Regarding arts, it is not common to find artists interested in golf as a theme; however, it is important to note the exceptional work of Rafael Contreras Canalizo, landscape painter, wonderfully gifted for reflecting light phenomena, finding shades and nuances of green and flowers, and revealing the features of the most modern and spectacular golf courses in the world. As an example of these courses, we can mention El Gran Palmilla, One and Only, found in Punta Palmilla, on the Sea ofCortés, Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, place of legendary beauty on the Pacific Ocean.
Rafael Contreras was born in San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico City, in the bosom of a family closely related to the arts and culture. His father was an actor and his mother was descended from Valentín Canalizo, president of Mexico in 1843. As a child, Contreras Canalizo lived in a house close to the Bosque de Chapultepec where he got used to observing nature and often perceiving its changes and secrets.
As a self-taught painter, Rafael has spent most of his 30-year-loving-nature trajectory, improving his technique to originally and uniquely express his idea of a landscape.
The development of this theme can be considered as a whole plastic contribution to the Mexican Art History, which is full of landscapes since the prehistoric age before the arrival of the Europeans in American lands.
As we have already mentioned, Contreras Canalizo is the only painter inMexico who develops the theme of the golf courses’ incomparable beauty, fantastically grasping their symbols, earth strength and sport impact.
This inclination made him want to reflect the magic symbols of the golf courses which convey the sensation of the accomplishment of a goal in each of their holes. With his paintbrushes, as a golf player, Contreras Canalizo reflects, in an original and unusual way, the wide courses (links) where there are many natural obstacles, which fairway is covered with even grass. As we all know, the player has to introduce the solid rubber ball in 18 holes (greens) on the course, by hitting it with the clubs; the winner is the player employing the fewest number of strokes. All this process, requiring a high level of expertise and talent, generally, takes place on beautiful courses that are examples of a vast and spectacular geography; each place has magic symbols that this artist knows how to paint with clean and accurate strokes of bright and vigorous nuances.
Contreras Canalizo is painting his most outstanding works particularly for the startling course of Palmilla One and Only. All his talent and expertise is centered in these landscapes of grass, mountains, bushes, vegetation, skies and seas that develop in the spectator the desire of a further exploration of nature and its magic and a better understanding of this regal and traditional sport.
We are before a painter who is rediscovering the magnificence of Punta Palmilla and its peculiar golf course in each painting, with equally peculiar shades and colors resulting from a great tradition and an ancient culture.
BERTA TARACENA
Historian and Art Critic
Berta Taracena. Historian and Art Critic. Member of the International Association of Art Critics. (Association Internationale des Critiques D’Arts).
