Editorial – Issue 80
COLOR BEGINS HERE
JENNIFER GÓMEZ | Co-Founder The Guide Artists
January unfolds as a territory of beginnings, a space where everything becomes possible once again. In art, that beginning often appears as a blank canvas, but also as an essential question: from where do we look? Color emerges as the first gesture, the first heartbeat. It is not a mere visual resource, but a profound language that runs through the history of art and the human experience, capable of moving us even before it is fully understood.
Each color carries a symbolic and emotional charge that is activated in the encounter with the artwork. Red bursts forth with the intensity of life itself; it embodies passion, urgency, conflict, and desire. Blue, by contrast, invites pause. It inhabits the realm of contemplation, of the infinite, of serene melancholy. In it we find the echo of sky and water, but also the depth of thought and inner silence. Green, associated with growth and balance, connects the work to nature and to the idea of constant renewal, reminding us that art, like life, is an organic process.
Yellow radiates light and awakens the mind. It is clarity, intuition, creative energy. In painting and design, it acts as a point of tension that draws the eye and activates space. Purple, charged with mystery, moves between the spiritual and the imaginary; it is the color of transformation, of symbolism, of what cannot be fully explained. Alongside them, whites, blacks, and grays build silences, pauses, and contrasts, shaping the balance between presence and absence.
Color does not only define the aesthetic of a work; it shapes its emotional reading. It changes the atmosphere, alters meaning, and transforms the viewer’s experience. The same stroke can tell different stories depending on the palette that surrounds it. To understand color, therefore, is not to reduce it to rules, but to open oneself to its power of suggestion, to its ambiguity, to its capacity for evocation.
In this first issue of the year, we celebrate color as the origin of the artistic gesture and as the bridge between the creator and the observer. We celebrate it as emotion, as symbol, and as sensory experience. Because art does not begin with form, nor does it end with concept: it begins when a color moves through us.
That is where everything starts. That is where art begins.
THE WINDOW TO THE ARTS
RAMÓN A.OLIVARES | Founder The Guide Artists
We are approaching our tenth anniversary.
A decade that began with a clear conviction: to create a space where figurative art could exist freely, with emotion and with truth. A place where the work would not need excessive explanation, but could simply be felt.
From the very beginning, we understood that we did not want to be just a publication. We wanted to be a perspective. A window open to the arts. That phrase, which has accompanied our identity from day one, is not a slogan. It is a promise. A promise to observe with respect, to curate with integrity, and to protect beauty in all its forms.
Over the years, The Guide Artists has become more than an editorial platform. It has grown into a community. A creative family formed by artists, readers, collectors, and admirers of figurative art who believe in the value of process, time, and commitment.
We have edited magazines, published books, and designed thousands of pages that now travel across the world. But beyond paper, each project has been an experience. Each artist, a story. Each work, a lasting imprint.
With time, I came to understand that art is not only creation. It is dialogue, exploration, and risk. It is also doubt, fragility, and change. Art needs spaces where it can breathe, where talent receives genuine support, and where passion is not measured in numbers, but in emotion.
From this necessity emerges The Guide Artists Global Award. Not as a conventional competition, but as a statement of intent. A meeting point where art can once again be felt, experienced, and respected through honesty and a deep commitment to the work itself.
The 10th Anniversary – The Guide Artists Global Award represents everything we have learned along this journey and everything we aspire to build in the future. It is a celebration, yes, but above all, it is a turning point. A conscious step forward.
Looking back is emotional. Remembering the first books, the first artists who trusted us when everything was just beginning. But looking ahead is even more powerful, because it means we are still alive, still creating, and still believing with the same intensity that drove us from the start.
Today, more than ever, art needs a new beginning. A purpose. A sense of meaning. And if these ten years have taught us anything, it is that there is no evolution without risk, and no beauty without truth.
Ten years later, we continue to look forward. Because we remain the window to the arts.
Issue 80 / January 2026 . Print Version
The First Cover of the Year
Danco Robert Duportai places the human figure in a liminal space, suspended between presence and disappearance. Wrapped in shadow, the figure emerges from a dreamlike atmosphere that speaks of memory, introspection, and emotional silence. This first cover of the year opens a curatorial path defined not by spectacle, but by depth, sensitivity, and quiet intensity.
