Joan Ramón Soto: landscapes of the psyche

He puts forward an analytical approach to investigate what colour can do when it comes to expressing emotions.

In his painting studio in Canet de Mar, Joan Ramón Soto Cifuentes (Barcelona, 1967) uses colour to explore the most hidden corners of his mind. His long experience, more than twenty years as a psychoanalyst, backs him up as an expert on the subject and lets him face the blank canvas with no preconceptions.

For him, the perfect moment for inspiration lies in the process of creation. He analyses the effects colour has on the artist while he works on the artwork. The idea is to capture the fleeting emotion of the creative act and let the impulses of the unconscious shape the structure of the composition through the emotions the colours pass on to him.

He turns what goes on inside him into landscapes. He paints portraits of moods, fears, fantasies and his own dreams. His collection of paintings Sueños de Morfeo stands out, where he expresses his dream world following the rules of colour.

Colour is without a doubt the main instrument he uses to develop his creations. He investigates the unconscious through Fauvism and creates open compositions that seek to evoke feelings shared by human consciousness. The ones that have stayed tucked away inside us, waiting for a stimulus to bring them back.

Joan Ramón Soto combines shapes and colours under the influence of Expressionism, Surrealism and Pop Art, along the lines of geometric, colour-driven abstraction. Every artwork gives off a very personal style marked by expressiveness pushed to the maximum and the strength of colour.

His artistic restlessness woke up when he was still a child and, although he works professionally in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, he has always kept a very close relationship with art. At ten he started out in academic drawing and, ever since, he has never stopped training.
You can find out more about Joan Ramón Soto Cifuentes here.