When Machuca goes on stage, two artists really go up on the identical time. One is devoted to singing flamenco, the opposite paints footage the wrong way up. And they’re each the identical individual, Manuel Machuca, the singer-painter from Benacazón, a 63-year-old artist from Seville who grew up with two passions which have blended.
It all began as a baby. Manuel was all the time glued to a brush. He cherished portray… nearly as a lot as listening to Carbonerillo, a fandango singer whose cassette he performed time and again. “I spent 20 years listening solely to him,” says Machuca, who grew up along with his two passions.
From flamenco he discovered different types and commenced to sing in bars and taverns. Then got here the performances and he ended up recording two albums. In addition, he has received quite a few awards as an arrow shooter. In portray he additionally progressed, he outlined himself as a portrait artist and after many work he has come to make greater than 50 exhibitions… And if he had time to spare, within the afternoons he was, and is, a hairdresser.
portray backwards
Suddenly at some point, he realized that cante and brush may very well be mixed. “I already used to hum whereas portray,” says Machuca. Now he needed to go one step additional: paint an image on stage throughout a flamenco efficiency. That wasn’t really easy anymore… except he turned it inside out.
“If I paint from the appropriate, I can not as a result of I’ve to consider singing and drawing on the identical time”, says Machuca. Instead, he realized that this didn’t occur to him by turning the portray the wrong way up to color the wrong way up. In this fashion he forces himself to make use of each hemispheres of his mind.
“The analytical half with which I communicate is the left half and the inventive half is the appropriate”, Machuca explains to NIUS, “I paint backwards and thus I’ve to information myself by geometric figures, with out the necessity to interrupt the left half, which is free for the track”.
One portray per efficiency
Since then, in every efficiency, he paints an image the wrong way up and when he finishes it, he turns it in the midst of the live performance, inflicting an ovation. “Many instances somebody from the general public involves the tip and buys it from me for 80 or 100 euros,” explains Machuca. On just one event he did two footage in a single efficiency and now he wish to do three devoted to the three types of flamenco: singing, dancing and guitar.
The initiatives are crowded on the door of this artist who has been requested by the city corridor of his city to offer a course in portray backwards. In the meantime, he’s additionally making ready to accompany the Sevillian group Cantores de Hispalis, which goes to include him as a painter on stage to make a portray whereas they sing.
“People do not get uninterested in me,” he tells NIUS… and he is proper. In his performances there may be all the time a little bit of every thing: the fervour of flamenco singing, the precision of a portrait painter. Two artists for the worth of 1, who additionally cuts hair within the evenings.