"For me, the decision to paint was more daring than challenging. I assumed it as such and I continue to carry it out with honor and love."

Juan Sandoval, born in Lima in 1977, is a graduate from the National Superior School of Fine Arts. His paintings fall within a surrealistic current of ethnic inspiration. They seek to rescue the social and the fundamental, inviting assessment of the human condition, emphasizing the woman and her dignity. His themes gather dreams and reminiscences. They are sometimes charged with an apocalyptic vision, but permeated with lyricism, like one who walks in darkness seeking the heart of man.

"I have drawn and painted since I was a schoolboy, and I believe it was then that I set out to become an artist. Thus, with this long-caressed desire, I came to the School of Fine Arts. In my painting, I am concerned with man - not man within the benign universe, but essentially man within society. I paint with oils and watercolors using both brush and palette knife. I make a sketch before beginning to paint, although I do not hesitate to modify something if it is in the interest of the theme, including colors that better express it.

"I prefer warm colors, such as earth colors and violets. They are vivid and command attention, they are strong and transmit energy. It is not so easy to know when one has finished his work. I feel it when I see that I have achieved the qualities of color and harmony of form. In painting, there is always something of the great masters. In order to achieve a pictorial identity of one's own, it is necessary to make one's own way.

"For me, the decision to paint was more daring than challenging. I assumed it as such and I continue to carry it out with honor and love.

"Novica is an excellent window for young people to display their art with a contemporary vision of life, its beings and nature."