Caleb Han Quintana: An Artist Who Echoes the Memories Encased in Paintings

The moment the picture on the canvas and our gaze towards it meet each other, there is a picture that speaks quietly. This is like a chemical reaction that occurs only in a moment when the memories expressed by the artist on the canvas pass by each viewer's experience at one point. American artist Caleb Hahne Quintana presents works that unique light and atmosphere, encompassing landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. Although it is not a very special scene, such as a faceless figure riding a horse or leaning against a car, alone in the rain or looking out a window, or a hand holding transparent water, the afterimage of colour and light leaves a deep lingering impression. His work delicately and vaguely captures the present, a condensation of countless moments from the past, and the stories of those who have finally found their voices after a long journey. Quintana, who grew up in Aurora, a small city in the western state of Colorado, majored in fine art at Rocky Mountain College and has been focusing on his art. His work, which weaves memory and imagination into a single painting.
It contains the history and experiences of a Sicho immigrant family. While silently transferring extremely personal emotions derived from places and memories onto canvas, the artist traces his roots to understand himself deeply, and viewers can easily discover forgotten stories. We asked for a conversation with Quintana, who spends an intense day in his Brooklyn studio.

L'OFFICIEL What kind of boy were you?
CALEB HAHNE QUINTANA (CHQ) was a curious boy. I always had to create something. I think I always wanted to do something creative, such as making a bow and arrow out of PVC pipe or drawing my favorite scenes from a comic book. Because my stepfather worked as a muralist, I followed him to his workshop and watched him draw from a young age, and we would sculpt or draw together when we were at home.

LH Are you still very curious now? What are you most curious about?
CHQ I want to believe so. But I also want to be more curious. Curiosity and observation are the purpose of my existence on this earth, through which I can create works and reflect on my place. What I'm most curious about is my own feelings. How do I reach various emotions, what is the purpose of those emotions, and what is my relationship with emotions. Recently, I have been doing a lot of Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) in my psychotherapy process, and thanks to that, I am curious about the patterns of my emotions and how they help me live in the world and am trying to find answers.

LH: I'm always curious about what an artist's daily life is like. How do you spend your days?
CHQ I spend my daily life quite systematically. I wake up around 7:30 a.m., exercise and meditate, and then ride my bike to the studio around 9 a.m. After I arrive and make coffee, I draw or work almost non-stop until I leave work. The time I spend on work varies every day, some days I spend four hours in the studio, other days I spend twelve hours in the studio. I just try to listen to what my body and mind want and need. Afterwards, I go home and read a book or do some work on the computer. I also love spending time at the park with my cat Max and my friends.

LH Of the various drawing processes, which part do you enjoy the most?
CHQ That's a good question. I enjoy the drawing process the most. Because it is the purest thought and action and the least risky. A poorly drawn drawing is easier to deal with than a poorly drawn painting. Drawing is also freeing in that it allows ideas to flow freely. This is also true for painting, but painting requires more steps and preparation. Drawing, on the other hand, is simple. It's almost as simple as signing a receipt.

LH : Where did the scenes in your paintings, where the story seems to be paused for a moment, come from? Is there something that always catches your eye?
CHQ I am fascinated by the space between action and action. I am attracted to moments of rest, the earth, and moments of contemplation, and I try to show the passage of time by using tools such as light, the rain of time, and someone's steps. I am more interested in the journey rather than the destination, which is why you may get the feeling that a movie has stopped in my paintings.

LH Are the people in the painting real? What is it about them that resonates with you and makes you want to capture it in a picture?
CHQ The people I draw are all people I know. I usually draw a person more than once because they appear repeatedly in my life. When I draw people, I want to depict their soul and essence. When one person is sitting and the other is a painter, painting him is like two living people meeting each other. The reason for drawing the blush on the cheeks is because blood flows through the person's body, and the reason for drawing the hair is because it is the person's DNA, a part of the person that is constantly living and dying. All of this seems so beautiful, and it is meaningful in that I can elevate people's existence by painting them.

LH The people in paintings leave an impression through their actions and gestures rather than their facial features or appearance.
CHQ It seems difficult to say that this was entirely intentional. Rather, it can be seen as an accumulation of the tools I use while drawing. I aim to create a kind of syntactic and expressive painting that embodies the essence of the character's actions and existence through brushstrokes, color, form, and line. I feel this says more than facial expressions. You could say it is an expression of the soul.

LH Among the portraits, self-portraits also stand out. When you draw yourself, what side of yourself do you try to express?
CHQ It's difficult to portray yourself without being objective. It may be natural to glorify yourself or portray yourself through a heroic or attractive lens. Still, I think it doesn't matter. But I want to know what it means psychologically to draw oneself, and I want to get to the core of it. Honestly and sincerely.

LH The special colours add a lingering feeling to the painting. When you use colour, do you follow your instincts or are you completely intentional?
CHQ Thank you for saying that. It seems like a combination of the two. While I allow myself to arrive at a colour palette in response to thoughts and feelings, I also meditate on places in the painting or actual places to pay attention to the psychological weight of time and place. This is because the work mainly depicts the specific place where I am. In this way, my paintings exist on the outskirts of memory, and I use color to guide this feeling.

LH More than anything, the background colour of the painting or the colour of the sky attracts attention. So, I guessed that you might be a person who believes that colours can express certain emotions.
CHQ I definitely think that colour brings emotion to a painting. I often want to create colours that are so intense that when someone sees a colour, they want to eat something or become part of that world. It's a colour that's close enough to reality that you can believe it's real, but it's a little off somewhere, making you bewildered and think, 'What time is it?' or 'How did I get here?'

LH: At what point do you think your story in your paintings resonates with the viewer’s story?
CHQ We believe that we rely on stories to understand the world, empathize with it, and find our place in it. My paintings also combine these elements, so people seem to believe that the story or their version of the story exists.

LH Do you have a secret ritual that you perform before starting or completing a work?
CHQ Again, this is a good question. I actually never show my unfinished work to anyone, not even my closest friends. You only get one chance to get a real response, and after going through several stages of the karma process, once you show something to someone, the magic is gone. When all the bones and bones are revealed, the intuitive reaction is bound to diminish. Also, because we are asked to consume and share so much of our lives, it feels special and necessary to be briefly tied to an emotional connection to a painting before others do. Right now I have a painting in the studio from February that no one has seen yet, and no one will see it until September. It's really nice to be able to have the painting belong solely to me for a few months.

LH ‘Aurora’, the name of your solo exhibition held last year and also your hometown, is a word that becomes more beautiful the more you think of it. What story did you want to tell about your hometown?
CHQ I love that word. I really like the movement of the tongue when pronouncing it. The slight collapse of my tongue when I say these words seems similar to the way a part of my heart collapses when we leave home. I left Colorado, where I was born, three years ago and now live in Brooklyn. During this time, I suffered from the feeling that I had abandoned myself, my home, my friends, and my family. But to make room for a new version of me to grow, a part of me has to stay in a certain place. Only then can one become another being in another place. As if a star was collapsing into something new.

LH Actually, it seems like expressions such as 'nostalgic' and 'nostalgia' are attached to your work.
CHQ I am proud that my work can make people remember and empathize with it. No one can live an isolated life. It's a special thing to be able to talk about something with and for so many people.

LH: Besides painting, is there anything else you’re passionate about?
CHQ Anyone who knows me knows that the moment I get into something, I become obsessed with it. I am obsessed with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, eBay, clothes, furniture, and cats. I love clothes and furniture because they have a special way of revealing our bodies and homes in ways that words can't express. I also love the thrill of scrolling through eBay before going to bed and finding a terrible-looking shirt or vintage Russian toy.

LH What is your favorite place in Brooklyn?
CHQ The place where you can easily answer is my studio. Because I'm here almost every day. Another place I regularly visit is the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Watching movies and plays there is something really special. The moment I walk out the door after staying there, I feel more peaceful than when I walked in every time.

LH What are you working on recently?
CHQ These days, I am researching paintings that depict indoor life. I am thinking and meditating again about the meaning of home and rest. I tend to draw as if I were writing a diary, so I started a new work based on a few drawings I made with gouache and pastel on paper during my two-week trip to Mexico City. I am also expanding the way and reasons why I draw people and challenging myself to use different colors and compositions.

LH It may sound a bit grandiose, but what is your ultimate dream as an artist?
CHQ Ultimately, maintaining my studio work and career for the rest of my life. I love the fact that I can wake up every morning and do what I do. There is not a day that goes by that I am not thankful. I want to continue learning, growing, and constantly challenging myself.