Building on the success of Paricio’s previous exhibitions, (Master Painters, 2011, and Diary of an Artist, 2012) the Canarian artist now showcases a new body of work entitled Shaman, comprising of twenty five original paintings.

Having left behind his beloved Tenerife to take up residency in London just over a year ago, Paricio has embarked on a new, painterly quest. Departing from his paradigm of weaving Art Historical narratives throughout his work, the Shaman series aims to identify, and reflect on, an entirely new set of spiritual symbols and icons which he has developed throughout the year.

Mixing the old with the new, Paricio continues to feature in his own composition, yet shifts from a focus of individuality and self, to exploring in depth the tangible and sensory connection of the human body to the spiritual world. Still highly influential in many cultures today, shamanistic practices involve elements of healing, divinity, prediction and even magic – the role of the community’s Shaman is to engage his people in all aspects, human and divine, of their own culture.

The artist now asks the viewer to allow themselves to be taken on a journey through his art – to reach a heightened state of euphoria simply by allowing a temporary release from social confines. Paricio highlights the physicality of humanism and mortality versus the mysticism of other-worldly realms, by making subtle references to the degenerative, yet simultaneously everlasting (through the advances of 21st century technology), society in which we all live.

Within Shaman, the subject of the painting and the physical mediums of the paint and canvas become transcendental. A shamamic totem, mythological portraits of Atlas and Sisifo – these iconic symbols which for centuries have been brought down to Earth to help the human race identify with the heavenly realm, are now elevated once again and we are asked to join them. Paricio’s paintings are held in many private collections internationally and luminaries in the art world have endorsed his talent, including Francesca Gavin, whose book 100 New Artists (2011) features Paricio representing an innovative generation that is forming the aesthetics of the coming decade. Museum curator and art critic, Juan Manuel Bonet says, “Paricio is the freshest artist I have seen in the contemporary Spanish art scene in 30 years.”

An exhibition of Paricio’s work will be held at the Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (TEA) in October 2014 and will run until March 2015.

Pedro Paricio was born on 16 January 1982 on Tenerife Island. As a child, he was always drawing, but at high school he studied science and only began to contemplate a future in the arts a few months before going to college. ‘To be honest, the thing that attracted me was the freedom that society gives to the artist’, he explains. ‘I chose art because I wanted a different life.’ Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, he now feels that the chain of events that led him into art was a process of discovering his fate, his destiny. Paricio enrolled at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of La Laguna, Tenerife, moving on to a course in Salamanca and completing his training with a degree in Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona (2004–2006). While at college, he considered a career as an art critic-cum-curator; such essays as Unfinished Articles I and II convey a lucid intelligence that enables him to reflect, for example, on the tyrannical relationship between artistic theory and practice. Paricio was focusing mostly on sculpture, installation and video art at the time of his first group show in Barcelona, Don’t Call It Performance (2004), but shortly afterwards decided to make painting his sole medium; he considers the latent possibilities of painting to be infinite and dismisses the idea of using other media or technology in response to fleeting fads in art.

Paricio’s paintings are held in many important private collections around the world, and he enjoys an international reputation following exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States. The Master Painters exhibition at Halcyon Gallery, London, in 2011 made a big impact on the international art scene, and in 2012 The Theatre of Painting, his first solo museum exhibition in Spain, was staged at the Institute of Culture and Arts of Seville. Paricio was honoured to be selected for inclusion in Francesca Gavin’s book 100 New Artists (2011), representing an innovative generation that is forming the aesthetics of the coming decade.