Toro, Arte, Alegria and B.S. Wattenbuttel...

It seems to be done now, I will have in 2009 and 2010 a bullfight paintings calendar printed and published in 7 countries from Eastern Europe and Germany... and, what is very important for me, I have established a kind, respectful and fair contact to the publisher company. I have worked myself in industry in Germany, and I know how difficult it is sometimes, due to the competition in the market place, to keep fair and kind... so happy to see that it still exists!

And yesterday I made an appointment for a visit to my art studio from a Scandinavian art lover group, called "Arte y Alegria". Three of them came to me, loved the Studio and my paintings, and I guess we will have some nice hours together when they all come at the end of the month. We might even organise something for them, with music, and spoken poetry... Kevin has such a fantastic voice!

By the way:Kevin wrote a new funny poem yesterday, B.S. Wattenbuttel, illustrated with the following picture, which I adore!

The Bulls are fighting Me...

About four years ago, I started making bullfight paintings, not really because I thought it would be a good commercial idea, but just because I have always been fascinated by everything touching "bullfight".
Please, don´t blame me. I hadn´t even learnt to walk as I was taken into a bullfight arena, again and again. Its colours, odours, music, movement, have always been a part of my childhood. I know that it looks different, but I must insist that my love for bullfight doesn´t say anything about my cruelty and so on. I love animals, I care for them, surely more than most of the anti bullfight militants! It´s just that when I am looking at a bullfight, I am in a kind of trance, and I don´t see the bull as a poor, helpless animal, not even as an animal. Much more as a part of a lively piece of art... like the bullfighter himself.

I painted a series of bullfightI, exhibited them, and well, sold them all very soon. Everybody around me told me that i should make more, and I did. I sold them too. Then they started to say that I should specialise in bullfights, and paint nothing else. I started again, but very soon I stopped. I started to feel an extreme boredom, and imagining painting that stuff all my life killed me! I didn´t even exhibit the last ones I had painted.

Just last year I was expressly asked to exhibit some again, and I did. Here, and in Almeria. But I refused to paint any new ones.

The bulls are coming back now, with reunited force! I have been contacted by a company making calendars. They may make a 2008 calendar with my bullfights, 2008 being the year of the bull in the Chinese calendar. A good thing for me, but there are problems with the photos I should provide, I haven´t enough or of good enough quality, as I am not the most disciplined painter in cataloging my paintings...
We will see... I just hope, if it works, that he wont´ make a bullfight painter out of me for the rest of my life! But right now it looks like the bulls are winning the battle. I´m sure that some people will say that I deserve it, having painted so many of these poor suffering animals...