Bio
Carlos Barrios Bio
Carlos was born in 1966 in San Salvador, El Salvador, Central America. His father was an archaeologist and mother a home maker who also worked in business. He had a childhood filled with visits to magical ancient places, pyramids and temples. When Carlos was a child art was an important discovery, it came to him for the first time in a stone belonging to an ancient city. He was on an excavation site wondering around amongst fragments of ceramic, obsidian and stone. He picked up one small stone, rectangular in shape, and as He looked into it He saw many figures. He kept it, and could observe it for hours, this fragment seemed to contain a film of moving and changing figures. At about six years of age he discovered some pots of paint and brushes in my father’s workshop. As he moved the paint around with the brushes through his imagination he could see many things, it allowed his hand to follow and trace them. One afternoon he planned a surprise for my parents whilst they were not around he created a large mural on a long corridor wall and was very proud of my achievement. On their return he was ordered to scrub the wall until it was spotless. He then tried collage using pictures and textures cut from encyclopaedias and precious books, He was again reprimanded for my bad behaviour. He was not discouraged as his desire to create pictures of the world he experienced was so strong. He began to keep drawing books where he recorded his experiences privately. His father was a collector of art and artefacts, he would stare into them and found himself transported to other dimensions, times and spaces. Everything was talking to his especially clouds and shadows, they seemed to describe a space between reality and fantasy, filled with adventures. The civil war began when he was ten and lasted over ten years. In this war time madness and normality coexisted. Many nights the electricity was cut and in the candle lit spaces of the house he saw creatures moving and watching us, so he would paint and draw them. From those moments until now, many years have brought new experiences, adventures, travels, people, places. The best moments are those in connection with a pencil or a brush dancing over a piece of paper or canvas. Art made him aware of different levels of existence within the universe, sometimes revealing many questions and other times great understandings.
