We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mauricio Avayu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mauricio below.

Mauricio, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

A COMPLETE TORAH MURAL

I started painting from mythology because I was fascinated by studying and revealing the stories that were hidden behind the literal and the obvious.. Suddenly one day, my mind and heart went dry. I felt I needed to go further. I needed to go deeper inside. One day I was reading a book about Michelangelo, I took a closer look at the details in his mural in the Sistine Chapel. He painted Adam and Eve with the snake, but I could see he was telling us the wrong story.

The snake in a “woman shape” in the Sistine Chapel is around the tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But the punishment of the snake was to be on the ground, so that’s a mistake. when you are not precise when illustrating a story , you change its meaning and what is worse , you make the observer lose the possibility of learning through the hundreds of codes it contains .The sacred scriptures were written to be studied and thus be able to unveil their messages.

Everyone thinks that G-d gave life to Adam with his finger. It’s an image most people are familiar with because of his painting. But G-d gave life to Adam with his breath, not with his finger. Michelango also mixed some of the stories from Greek mythology with the stories from the new Testament.

Everyone thinks the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple. But it was actually a fig. So I decided that I would paint the Torah. I assumed that I if I were to run a Google search I would find a lot of Torah murals. But to my surprise, I couldn’t find anyone who had done this before. And that’s because you need to know how to both paint and study the Torah. Some people focus on studying, while others focus on painting. But I needed to do both.

When completed, the Complete Torah Mural size will be 6,5 foot high and 164 foot long . Each book of the Torah will be portrayed through eight paintings; it will include 40 paintings that will sequentially depict the events of the Torah. Each painting will be 78.7 inches high and 49.2 inches wide , is the same mathematical proportion as the Kodesh Hakedoshim, the Holy of Holies , that G-d gave to Moses to build the Ark of the Covenant .

Mauricio, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We live in a time where it seems that nothing has a meaning or a purpose. In my works, each detail has a reason supported by a constant search for beauty and excellence.

All my works tell stories, the spirituality of the sacred, elements of Kabbalah, which refers to Jewish mysticism. It is a very particular way of telling it through images . All the aesthetics of the work points to the story, whether to portray family stories, the origins of names, or images from the Holy Scriptures. I have a very particular way of inserting history subliminally .

The sizes range from a letter sheet to large murals of approximately 164 foot long .

I am very rigorous and precise, especially when telling an illustrated a family story that requires a lot of study. In the end, it is a job that is half study, half painting. A family history is reflected and illustrated in a work and the script marks what they have lived , his own history this commissioned paint for sure will be a legacy for all the family members .

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Our passage through this world is less than ephemeral. A work made specially for a family or for a community is a portrait that moves and reminds them of who they are and their history.
It is not a work commissioned just to decorate a space, the idea is to leave an indelible mark.
The creativity mixed with discipline and excellence allows me to leave unique pieces full of beauty, but the most important thing is that those who commissioned it were part of the script, that is how this work finally becomes a legacy for future generations.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being creative in your experience?

Since we are born, we are at war between Love and fear. In other words, we live taking decisions that are evaluated by one of the two hemispheres of our brain, generally our dominant hemisphere is the left one, which controls logic, our internal clock, our speak, etc., etc. On the other hand, we have our right hemisphere, the one that dominates emotions, intuition and creativity.
Both are important in life. The logic to take good decisions when they are needed , but at the same time we need two do what we love the most , so that combination gives me the maximum of freedom full of happiness , each day of my life .

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mauricioavayu.com
• Instagram: mauricioavayu
• Facebook: Mauricio Avayu

Image Credits
Mauricio Avayu