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Street artist Sebas Velasco has just finished painting his mural in Kiev, Ukraine for the Art United Us project. Art United Us project unites two hundred artists through mural art and the promulgation of maintaining peace on Earth, and is curated by Geo Leros, Iryna Kanishcheva and Waone Interesni Kazki.
Sebas Velasco has been drawing since he was very young, but started painting on the streets as a teenager in Burgos, Spain when he met a group of teenagers painting graffiti near train tracks. It was when he started college studying fine art in the Basque Country that his perspective opened and allowed him to meet more people on the scene.
The attraction to paint on the street for Sebas was that it allowed him to paint larger formats, utilise different approaches and gave him an opportunity to meet with other street artists, travel to see new places and integrate with them.
For his new wall in Kiev, Sebas believes the interpretation is pretty much open for the viewer to decide and likes the idea of something that can generate different stories, just like a daydream of the character he has painted.
Sebas takes a lot of his inspiration from the street and his surroundings.
“Kiev was really inspiring. The Wall, with all the architectures, the letters, the different lights and colours in the night, I found very suggesting. I used photos I took from the hotel, and I’d go back with good ones for my studio work.” Sebas Velasco
The man in the mural is a local man from Kiev, who invited Sebas out for dinner.
“The line over the his face is open to the viewer to decide, but it could be like a continuation of the green neon you see behind. Then you can read everything you want. Light and shadow, light over shadow, inspiration, whatever. It’s also a way to give a more abstract level to the composition and make the viewer wonder what’s going on…, or create some lack of comfort.” Sebas Velasco
“For me painting is not only about meaning but about the way it is done. About the marks of the brush, the use of colour, the line, density, texture, all those things. In this sense I enjoy a lot the realistic painters from the beginning of the twentyith century. Paint itself is very alive on them, further than the image itself. One of those would be of course Ilia Repin (Chugúyev 1844), and it was so nice to see his paintings “in flesh” in Kiev….I also discovered Mykola Pymonenko.” Sebas Velasco
Check back at a later date for more murals from Art United Us project.
Photo credit Geo Leros