I think getting used to living with a bit more uncertainty is my new normal. We were all a little bit spoilt with the idea that we could control the world, and I think learning to accept the uncertain has been a good life lesson for me. At night I’ll write my plan for the next day – wake up, take my medication, shower, read something (anything quick), then work on a painting, or perhaps an idea of one. I’ll try and make room for some sport or socialising too, otherwise I’ll go crazy.

I’ve never tried to install my work within a specific movement or anything. I can’t feel free to create something if I’m trying to think about whether it belongs to one place or another. The spirit of my paintings could exist in any period of time, I’d like to think. I do use inspiration from different genres, like Baroque, but I’m not trying to imitate them. There’s something that I share with certain movements, particularly some 19th century illustrators, I can’t really explain – some kind of magic fairy dust. I know it exists, but I don’t know exactly what it is.

He’s one of my biggest inspirations, one of my paintings at the Moco is completely inspired by his work. It’s my understanding that he divided various parts of his personality into the characters in his paintings, the Vivian girls and all their enemies. I think he had a lot of mental issues, but his illustrations were a kind of freedom for him. It’s impossible to know what went on in his life really. I think his fantasy word is what shows us the most about his real life.

Well, I don’t try not to be political, but sometimes a painting inspires an emotion that becomes political. I’m not trying to address any political issues specifically. I’m trying to get deep within my own consciousness and find a collective subconscious, if such a thing exists. In South America, there’s been a few periods with very political art, but I think it’s more to do with exportation, and pleasing the market.

Well, I have all these folders with many images that I’ve classified. I’ll have a look through them and see which one I connect with on any given day. After that first step, I’ll close my eyes and see what’s going on and use a sort of photoshop in my mind. I’ll walk around and see who else is there, and I’ll take notes until I have something a bit clearer that I can use as a prompt for a painting.

I think I have around 300 reference images, so I’ve had to categorise them because otherwise I’d get really lost. I think I have about fifty five folders. I’m not usually an organised person but with this, I have to be because I just don’t trust my memory. Sometimes I’ll have a really deep intense emotional response to something, and I won’t act on it at the time, but then I might paint something based on a feeling or reaction I had from four years ago, I don’t think I could have that without my folders.

I like the spontaneity that children and animals give me. I see the animals as symbols of parts of my consciousness; they’re like different myths within my imagination, representing my different drives. You can see this use of animals to represent the desires of humans in many ancient cultures. But I think the precious part of my soul is what I represent with the image of the little girl.

I imagine my characters as spirits; they have a history behind them that represent some moments of my life, and when I start to create an image, after that I think – why did I paint that? Is it about something that happened recently in my life? I try to make an analysis. For me the little girl is not a child, it’s a really old spirit that has the appearance of a child, but then some of them are actually children, and they represent the relationship I had with my sister as kids.

I think it’s a real world, but a hidden real world and I use symbols to show it, but it definitely exists. We can’t just take it and show it literally, we need a process to communicate.

I feel positive about it, I don’t think NFTs are going to disappear, I think it’s more likely to mix with physical art then go away. Digital art is nothing new, but now it’s becoming a lot more powerful, it’s really intense what’s going on right now. Energy is a dilemma of our time, be it flying a plane or having children, we need a global solution regardless of whether we’re consuming more or less.

Even I’m trying to learn more about it because I’m not completely clear on the implications, but I think the technology is going to improve, and ultimately clean electricity is something we need in the world in general, regardless of whether we use more or less of it.

Ah yes, he’s a powerful reference, also Gustave Doré, along with these there’s many others that have been powerful for me because I saw them as a kid, I don’t necessarily remember all their names, but the symbols that I use can be seen in this period of illustrators.

I don’t think so, no. Of course, I use references, like going to the zoo or something, but the characters come from forces within, not acquaintances from the outside.

For me, it was more of a technical experiment, not that it wasn’t an interesting one, but in that moment, I didn’t feel loose, I’d just left university and their way of thinking and looking inside wasn’t the proper way, or for me at least, I just needed to find my own methods that worked for me. It took a couple of years for me to find myself and create something that felt like a true representation of me. It was actually really hard to get inside, but super satisfying when I got it.

I like Freud, but I think I prefer Bacon to be honest.

Well, that’s the good thing about London!

I think neuroscience is a more accurate representation of how the brain actually works, but for me Freud is like reading literature. Although, I’ll admit there are some cases where I think he has a point. This libidinal energy that drives life does inform sex, but it’s also behind a lot of different things that we do in life. In my paintings you can see some references which can be erotic in a way. I think the fighting of the animals I see in an erotic way, just because it’s a similar drive. The surrealists used his work directly as a theoretical frame, but I don’t do that so much. In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, there was one case that really inspired me. The Wolf Man has a recurring dream that many wolves were staring at him from a tree, I always used to have the same image in my mind (before I read about it) but with cats instead of wolves and weirdly there are many parallels between my childhood and my life and that of the man from the story. Our personalities had similar agents, so that actually really impressed me.

I find it quite difficult to separate, I think my behaviour is pretty much the same all the time to be honest. I’ve been an artist since as long as I can remember, so it doesn’t really feel like a different part of me, as long as I’ve had memories Guillermo the artist and Guillermo the man have been the same person.

My mother always let me be free. When I was a kid, she really used to stimulate my creativity. She painted as a hobby which made me want to paint as well to imitate her, but I had my own world of dinosaurs going on. She was probably the most important person to my development as an artist, even nowadays I’m always showing her my compositions and we have a very close relationship; her opinion is still very very important to me.

You can never do the same painting twice, it’s an ancient practice but every brush stroke is still different, your hand is an expression of your personality in that moment, even if the final product is digital. Screens are more stimulating and make you more on excitable whereas I find paintings to be more calming, both the meditative process and the experience of viewing it.

I don’t think I’ve ever tried to hide anything when I’m painting, violence is something I see all the time in the real world. Constantly there’s a battle between violence and cooperation – not violence in a literal sense, but I do use it as a symbol in some paintings just as a tool to study the human condition.

Not directly, but it had a real impact on my mood, which in turn had an impact on my paintings. But I’m not literally about to paint a riot. Everyone was pretty afraid, it looked like there might be a civil war, which made us ref lect a little on our history, what with our military coup. We actually had a 10 o’clock curfew, even before the pandemic, and there was a strong military presence in the street. The country is trying to draw up a new constitution at the moment, but I’m not too hopeful. At least the current situation is quite a bit calmer. Even though the pandemic was obviously horrible, I think the way Chile handled it helped to calm the nation down a bit. It’s a strange old country, sometimes we’re really stable for a long time, but then sometimes we want to go crazy and burn things (laughs).

I’m actually trying to paint a dragon, but I’m not sure how to do it. I’m doing a lot of studies because I don’t want to do a traditional, like from tarot cards or something but eventually I guess I’ll end up with something similar to a dinosaur. I’ve never thought to paint one but if an idea were to present itself then I’d take it.

Of course, I always have a critic within myself, and I always try to make the next painting better than the previous one. Without that feeling you’d lose the incentive to create, I always have to be critical and believe that I can be better, but I’m not too harsh on myself (laughs), generally speaking I do like my work.

 I just really like natural size, more or less one to one. If I think of a tree, I’ll have to do a huge painting because, well, it’s a tree. I don’t want to do tiny paintings but equally I don’t want to make things too big, with natural size you interact with the painting as if it is right there in front of you.

Cinema is a huge influence on my work. I saw Akira when I was just 9 and it really impressed me so I’ve rewatched it many times since, as well as plenty of Miyazaki films. Stanley Kubrick is also a big influence on my paintings, more in spirit than in literal aesthetics. Visually speaking, Peter Greenaway’s films have inspired my compositions quite a bit.

I used to be a night person, actually I am a night person. Now I go to bed around 4am but it used to be more like 8 or 9, especially when I’m in the process of painting I prefer to do it at night. I like to think I’ve reached an equilibrium now, but ever since school I’ve never been able to go to sleep, but I find that my natural state is in the night- time and I’m comfortable with that, I’m happy to use the mornings for sleeping.

Yeah, it has been quite lonely because for most of my life I’ve lived in Chile, and even though I’m a social person in general, I’ve never really been friends with fellow artists. But recently as I’ve built up more of an international network, I’m making an effort to socialise with other artists more.

Well, yeah, with hentai and everything I think these sexual fantasies are really common. I’m not sure if we know enough about the brain to get a matrix-level immersion. Things like these have the potential to completely change the way that we live. In the virtual world we can ask ourselves why we need to be human, if you want to be an eagle, fly as an eagle, feel as an eagle, see as an eagle, then why not. The real question is if we’ll be more or less happy – if someone who doesn’t exist can make you feel less alone then why shouldn’t they? Why should they have to be a human?