In the basement of one of the first homes in Las Terrazas community , Ariel Gato built his gallery workshop. From a small and well-used space, the plastic artist gives life to his work, imbrication of painting and engraving, within the magical world of creation.

Although he was not born there , he arrived in 1994. "I was born in Los Palacios, I came to teach plastic arts classes in elementary school, as a social service. Here I got married and started a family.

"I was in third grade when my dad took me to the Culture House, because instead of attending Mathematics, I had notebooks full of drawings. In fourth grade, I entered the Raul SanchezVocational School , in Pinar del Río and I graduated from Engraving at the National School of Art (ENA), 1994.
Once in Las Terrazas.

"I taught classes to children, and there were several who live today from their work: Anet, Henry Alomá, Fernando Paredes. When I finished the social service, I had a pottery workshop and I worked with the children who had habilities and potential. I taught them to carve wood.

"The work with mud stopped because the furnace that I had brought from Candelaria consumed a lot of electricity, it was the years of the Energy Revolution in the country, and the local authorities did not support me.

"Then I registered in the Provincial Registry of the Creator, in Pinar del Río; I am an independent artist and started to market my work, paying 30 percent (%).

How did Ariel Gallery began?

"I did not make more ceramics, I was an engraver but I did not have materials. I remembered that in the ENA in 1992, the full Special Period, the teachers recycled in order to replace the lack of paper. And I started doing linography, with local flora and fauna, there was nothing conceptual at that moment.

"I made my machines: crude and criolla press, a macerating machine, and my own paper. I added natural elements such as flower petals, seedling peel, corn hair and others. No chemistry: I prepare pink color with beets, the green is prepared with caña brava plant , the blue with the apple packaging material. I was supported by the Academy of Sciences.

"When the children finish with the notebooks they bring them to me, and I recycle them. I added bear hair to that type of paper - a limo of the dam, invasive plant - and I get a more ecological paper: with which I make agendas, envelopes and within those I commercialize reproductions of my work in engraving.

"Sure, I found support for my work. I do not intend to do anything other than engraving. As most tourists say: he is an 'artisan artist', I put my work in function of a craft. Not everyone can take an original, most I stay with them. The engraving has the possibility of making reproductions.

"My work is totally naturalistic and figurative. I'm not attracted to abstraction. The influence of the Environment influenced is present: I make birds, local flowers, although there are also many human figures in my work. I have conceptual things, but they do not come from nature. "

Regarding engraving techniques, Ariel is committed to lithography, intaglio, linography, woodcut and screen printing, the most commercial. In the reproductions exhibited in your gallery you can appreciate the level of detail that his prints reach, to the point of rubbing with the photograph. Illustrations made for the book The French coffee plantations in the Sierra del Rosario (1790-1850) stands out, together with painter Léster Campa.

Different places in the capital city such as Pabellon Cuba and the Palace of the Captains General have shown his work, plus his homeland, the plastic arts halls of the city of Pinar del Río, and Candelaria. The exhibition With the feet in the land, marked a turning point in his career.

"I had never done a big exhibition. I did it in the gallery of Arturo Regueiro culture house , in Pinar del Río. It included 42 works of painting and engraving, of more than one meter ".

The pieces included Adam and Eve, Metamorphosis, Melancholy and Breaking Dawn. "From a place in north of the Pinar del Rio geography, he makes free and dialectical links with his xylographs and paintings, in which he participates with clear awareness that he is part of the youngest avant-garde art in Vueltabajo", Heriberto Acanda Ramos said.

During a visit to his workshop, Ariel explains to us the creative process, from the manufacture of the paper that serves as support to the prints exhibited in the gallery, ready to be marketed. And while he shows them with pride, it is possible to weigh the validity of the artist, now wrapped in several paintings.

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