“All this doodling continued into high school and after high school. It was freeing. I felt like I was discovering a secret world that was happening beneath the surface. Some of my best early memories were of finding cool places to draw with friends as a teenager,” Lovato said.
From the age of eighteen, his emotions have become increasingly complex. Figures, landscapes and pastel patches of color enter his images. (The latter feature was created using materials from “Oops” paint cans stacked at the local hardware store.) The figures are works on paper that express Lovato’s interest in fringe themes, symbolism, and esoteric history. The sophisticated use of color was not yet fully developed. Instead, in these paintings the viewer finds Lovato the draftsman. The lines are dominated by a small amount of block color. Alchemical symbols and captivating shamanic characters suggest a deep exploration of the “immovable realm” that dominates his practice today.
My art has always tried to illustrate the spiritual world permeating the physical world. The two worlds influence and compete with each other. “
Once he turned to landscapes, the nascent themes of these paintings coalesced into something more refined. Trees and fields provide a rough, often suggestive environment that takes over the shamanic role and begins to interact with the color patches. The comic-like narrative focused on The Magician and Second Sight faded away as he became more immersed in his current style, an investigation of the delicate balance between order and chaos in reality.
“My art has always tried to show the spiritual world bleed into the material world. The two worlds influence and interact with each other. This is also what my recent art is really about. When I look at my work, I see the ethereal world as a substrate or lattice. When I see patterns in nature, it looks like the world is growing from spiritual perfection into matter. I try to capture a small part of that overwhelming complexity and mystery in my work,” he said.
Lovato’s first foray into his current psychedelic natural mood was a bit simplistic. As the reality and purity of the landscape brought him closer and closer, the raw, cartoonish quality of his paintings gradually disappeared. In landscapes he found solace, as the artwork absorbed his own surroundings and experiences. The work became increasingly personal, demanding more of his own narrative.
Fusing his personal story with the endless changes of nature, he is filled with gratitude. For Lovato, his incomprehensible mosaics fuse these personal, universal stories with destiny or fate, expressing transcendent ideas that can never be confined within the shabby trappings of human language.
“These paintings are trying to convey something good to the world,” he said. “Art in general is an opportunity to escape into another reality. When you spend a few days in the wilderness, you get a truly mystical and universal experience. It’s visceral. I wanted to bring these intuitively palpable realizations into my art through landscapes.”
The process of creating a mosaic landscape begins with nature. The forest scenes in his work were largely drawn from what he discovered during his travels in North America. Any unfamiliar or unique vistas that surprised him would become fodder for future paintings.
These days, these inspiring areas are right outside his front door. Lovato and his fiancée live on a few acres in some secluded and (appropriately) unincorporated wooded areas in western Washington state. The wind blew through the woods and the birds chirped. Life is full of energy and solitude makes it easy for him to focus on his work.
I don’t usually photograph landscapes unless I’ve been there myself to take reference photos and fully experience the feeling of a place…”
“I love America and its landscapes—I never get tired of the variety of countries. I don’t usually photograph landscapes unless I’ve been there myself to take reference photos and fully experience the feel of a place,” he says.
Once Lovato has a subject in mind, the process becomes difficult. The medium is fairly traditional – acrylic on canvas, linen or wood, depending on the desired effect. (Drawed, and still is, on Micron Sepia and Stonehenge paper.)
The canvas is covered with original paintings. The first painting itself is covered in masking. Cut out the pattern on the mask and remove half of the cover. Cover the exposed painting however Lovato sees fit. When the process felt complete, Lovato removed the other half of the masking and the composition was complete.
Lovato describes the process as “creating color vibrations by contrasting the dissonance of the image.” His discrete and contrasting paintings on a single canvas buzz as a single and coherent entity. He believed that colors vibrated visually. They become two sound waves, creating an interference pattern. Their differences unite them and all semblance of disunity disappears, leaving behind their sacred common ground. They become a universal constant. They move from conflict to mere existence.
Lovato said: “The process of completing a piece and seeing the culmination of a monumental effort is a reward in itself. The work requires a lot of alone time. Which is nice because I think I tend to be a hermit, or at least find happiness in all the solitude.
