Interacting colours

What we need right now is some colour. Here's Bubi Canal, a New York-based artist from Spain who does strange vivid portraits of people and creatures and various kinds of mixed-up mythology, all with the brightest liveliest colours and his own idiosyncratic approach to photography.

My work is intuitive and autobiographical. I grew up in Spain and now live in New York, and I feel like I belong to two different worlds. So, in my work, I cast myself, friends and family members as mythological Spanish creatures or hybrid characters from my imagination. Although these entities all are projections of me and my influences, they each also have their own identity and give the viewer the freedom to create their own story as well….

When I was in college in Bilbao, in the Basque Country, I took a sculpture class in which I worked with only two colors, red and blue, for a year. I chose these colors because I loved how they interact with each other. The same year, I started taking portraits with my sculptures and using clothes with the same colors. These images made me feel something exciting. So, I continued in that direction. I’ve kept adding colors to my palette, but I’m highly specific about the colors I choose.