The Ėditure · Artists

Jose Herrera

Jose Herrera paints circles of light and color. That is pretty much what his Celestial Bodies series is: simple, abstract, almost geometric shapes, with color that seems lit from within. He works in acrylic on canvas and also in photography, and while the result looks very clean and very considered, he describes it more as an exploration, of his own abilities and of whatever comes up while he paints. He used to want every canvas to come out perfect, until he realized there is no such thing, and that is sort of when he loosened up.

Getting to painting took him a detour. He studied advertising and graphic design, and although he took painting classes as a kid, as an adult he only did it for the love of it: drawing, painting, taking photos. There was a stretch when he was doing things he didn’t like and that didn’t seem to be taking him anywhere, feeling a lot of anxiety about the future, until one day he decided to bet on what had always been there. He puts it plainly: he stopped kidding himself and accepted that he was born to paint, design and create. He started sharing his work, the response was really good, and that’s when he understood he could actually make a living from art and design.

What shaped him shows in the work. His student years in New York pulled him straight into the world of art and design, and that’s where he realized he loved every kind of visual art. Then there are the movements that broke with realism, from Impressionism to Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism, which gave him the confidence to paint whatever he wanted and led him to abstraction. And there is Mark Rothko, with his way of handling color and scale and a simplicity that Jose is completely obsessed with. You can feel some of that in Celestial Bodies: very little on the canvas, and a lot of color doing the work.

His process has a very hands-on, craftsman side that hasn’t changed since he started, which is how he lays out his paint and materials before he begins and how he cleans everything up when he’s done. Over time he has fine-tuned it to spend as little time as possible on the boring parts. The ideas come from somewhere else. He thinks about the things in life that make him curious and looks for ways to get them out of his head and onto the canvas, but he says inspiration almost always shows up out of nowhere, something you saw, read or lived that just clicks, and you hold on to it for a whole series. What he always protects is a pretty simple rule: he only makes things he would hang in his own space.

Jose has never asked a client what it’s like to live with one of his paintings, but he knows what happens to him. He has his own work all over the studio, and every so often he catches his eyes drifting toward the canvases, as if they were pulling him in. Because they are so minimal and geometric, they sit well in almost any interior. They look best in natural light, and at night the move is to point a spotlight at them, because the way they are painted lets that light lift the glow the piece already has.

There is one message from his first sales that stayed with him, from back when he was just starting to take this seriously. A client wrote to him out of the blue to say she loved her painting and that no one came over to her house without telling her how great it was. Jose says that was the moment he believed it, that he really was good enough as an artist and that his work deserved to be seen. Today the people who connect with what he does range from first-time buyers to interior designers, with collectors anywhere from 28 to 60.

His career is just getting started. He has shown in Monterrey and took part in BADA during Mexico City’s art week, and he keeps refining Celestial Bodies while he explores what comes next. What keeps him up at night is having the discipline and creativity to keep making new things, a process he loves and that can also feel like a lot. And when he’s asked what he wants someone to understand the first time they see his work, the answer is short and very much his own: that they understand nothing, but feel something.