Artist's Wine Paintings Are ~Intoxicatingly~ Good

Being able to paint or create art is an incredible gift. Mix that with an ability to create art out of everyday objects like this artist who paints with wine, and you have a winning combination. Alfonso Aguirre is a Spanish painter who uses wine instead of paints and oils to create amazing works of art. His techniques are professional and highly precise. It takes a lot to create realistic works of art, especially using an unfamiliar medium, but he took up this challenge and nailed it.

It also turns out that like Viagra and penicillin, some of the best things are created by accident. Alfonso Aguirre accidentally dipped his brush into a glass of wine while painting, and liked the results so much that it became part of his repertoire. His artwork explores unconventional topics, like his series of San Francisco-based Drag Queens. He is also interested in exploring juxtapositions, like his matador paintings, which he uses as a way to represent sensuality and masculinity at the same time.

Unlike a lot of watercolor works, his paintings are huge. There is no room to make mistakes. Alfonso Aguirre explained in the video that unlike oils, which can be mixed and manipulated, there is very little space for a mess-up when it comes to watercolor (winecolor?). Whatever is on the canvas, or page, is there.

The artists himself admits that he knows no one in Spain that uses wine as an art supply. Personally, if that was something available to me, I would switch my major to the fine arts immediately. Watch the full video about his art by Mode here.

This isn't the first time that artists have used unfamiliar substances to paint or create art. A little while ago, there was an installation by artist Casey Jenkins, who used her menstrual cycle and yarn to demonstrate what a woman's body goes through during the period cycle. The video had be obsessively watching for days, and seems to have sparked a lot of conversation about turning periods into art.

It's wonderful to see people pushing the artistic boundaries with work like this. Whether it's using wine or blood-soaked yarn instead of paint — the result is a conversation. And that's what art is all about.

Images: Unsplash