Spanish artist and illustrator Pep Carrió has been illustrating a daily visual diary since 2007. Since then, Carrió has covered hundreds of pages of moleskin sketchbooks with his stream-of-consciousness and daily thoughts, which have garnered a massive library of work that showcases an interesting insight into Carriós’ interests and train of thought. Something that originally began as a simple challenge: to draw something every day, turned into a personal creative goal to fill a single moleskin datebook with a new illustration, collage, painting, or sketch throughout the year.
Carrió’s massive archive of personal works acts as a library of thoughts and memories on paper for the artist himself – and a window to the imagination of an artist for the rest of us
With topics and themes ranging from abstract patterns to detailed botanicals, still lifes, and landscapes – human figures and surreal silhouettes seem to be a recurring theme throughout the years. The shape of an empty mind as a vessel filled with thoughts and feelings repeats throughout the pages, as a beautiful metaphor of the artist pouring his own consciousness onto the paper. Since its beginning 15 years ago, the ongoing project has accumulated a massive archive of personal works that act as a library of thoughts on paper for the artist himself and a window to the imagination of an artist for the rest of us.
The intensity, in both topics and amount, Carrió’s work pulls you in. And the more you flip through them the more tangible and relatable it gets. It feels seductively intimate and intriguingly intrusive at once.
In his work, Carrió utilizes a vast range of mediums including markers, pencil, tempera, pen, ink, photographs, collage, and repurposed materials, yet always using a moleskin sketchbook as his canvas. Over time the work has grown from a single day’s work covering a single page, to now each day taking over an entire spread. And as the artist work plays more boldly on composition and the confinements of the edges of the paper, the emotions and memories captured on each page make you curious about what comes next. The intensity, in both topics and amount, Carrió’s work pulls you in. And the more you flip through them the more tangible and relatable it gets. It feels seductively intimate and intriguingly intrusive at once.
You can find Carrió’s work currently on display at the Play with Design exhibition at the Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporánea in Valencia, or you can browse over a thousand of his works on his Instagram.
