Being an artist is no easy task. From time immemorial, artists have worked in solitude in their own personal worlds, physically distant one from the other, with little possibility to exchange ideas or to learn from the experience of other artists. The act of creation occurs under certain conditions, which differ from artist to artist. However, wherever they may be, the essence is the same in all cases: to express the richness within.
The modern world is a convoluted place, but no matter what the hardships or the struggle, artists everywhere still manage to convey magic: sometimes making do with the scarce material at their disposal, and at other times allowing the mind and the hands to cry out for the freedom they lack. And creation goes on, independently of time or space, because the artist has the gift of proving how subjective our perception of time is as well as being able to leave belief in suspense. Time stands still when the artist confrontss nothingness, the only sound that can be heard is the stirring of his soul, aroused by a multiplicity of images, open windows to uncertain worlds, invitations to possible dreams. And then, he starts making choices, taking sole responsibility for them, frantically working to keep track of the paths shown by his intuition, only to get lost and find himself again, only to feel pain, and anger, and elation, as the result of the battle fought between his conscious mind and his unconscious. He falls prey to the dragons and is saved by the angels, he faces the tempest and embraces the sun, succumbing to hell in order to experience paradise. All of that in a single moment, the moment in which an art object begins to take shape in whatever medium the artist has chosen to work; the supreme moment of gestation.
How much of the human being behind the artist can be found in the final product? Nobody knows the answer, not even the artist himself: the act of creation has always been something of an alchemical ceremony. The primary motives behind any given work of art are deeply buried in the collective unconscious. We create art to project ourselves into the future, making use of the cultural baggage we bring to the present, profoundly influenced by the experiences of our past. However, in recent years, technological advances have made the world a much smaller place. The creation of virtual environments has given art the possibility to reformulate itself in exciting new fora such as ArtLives, a virtual journey on the road to reality. ArtLives is a meeting point for artists regardless of time and space, it is a place to give, to share, to learn, to debate, to grow, to receive input, to feel, to experience. A community of artists which, on a small scale, is an example of how the world should be: a place without frontiers where languages, credos and ideologies freely coexist.
Artlives is a mirror in which there is no place for solitude, it is a space for reflection, a statement on the creative freedom of Art.
LUIS FORMAIANO JUNE 2001

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