José Vicente Anaya

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From the cave paintings of Altamira or Baja California Sur until after postmodernism, painters have always done and will do the same thing: transmit feelings; whether or not it is the artist's purpose. Kandinsky's play of emotional colors did not escape this principle; nor the computerized geometrisms of Vasarely. I think this because it is precisely the feelings that first attack me when I see Fermín's paintings.

 

I do not intend to highlight the technical arguments about painting (for authentic artists, techniques are “a piece of cake”), I simply put emphasis on the visual elements that move the internal fibers.

 

It is obvious that Fermín's colors and textures, which sometimes hint at or are clear open horizons, come from a long and painstaking work that has wrested his secrets from the pictorial materials. But those horizons of earth or sky put the individual on the edge of himself; and they are, in part, the visual heritage of the Chihuahuan landscape (that is why it has so many ochers and blues). Being on the edge of oneself suggests loneliness and confrontation, that precious state of individualistic wisdom like that of the anchorite angels or the Buddhas. And that loneliness is felt not only when there is a single individual in a painting by Fermín, but even when groups are seen, as is the case of the five bullfighters who seem to form a single person, or they are split, or there are five alone with their solitudes... So many, and more, can be the ways in which one discovers emotions while contemplating Fermín's work.