David Elia and Rob Goyanes in Conversation

In October 2023 writer Rob Goyanes and David Elia met up for an online conversation about art, landscape and environment and sources of inspiration from the light of Rio and the south of France to Color Field painting and Jaques Tati - and surprisingly into Weird Barbie’s house in the lates film.

David Elia trained as a designer but has in last years focused more on painting and drawing. Still there’s much that connect his paintings and his design objects, he brings a keen interest in the environment, history and social questions into his work abstracted into grids and dots. Rob Goyanes is a writer and editor from Miami, Florida, living in Los Angeles. He works as an editor for book publishers, popular and unpopular magazines, fiction writers, artists, curators, and music labels.

I recognized the special light there [in the South of France] that artists often talk about. Cezanne and Matisse always spoke about how the light was very conducive to their work, that luminous quality. The light in Rio, it’s a different kind of light, it’s stronger, yet the sky is much darker.

(Photo: Mat Smith Photography)