Carlos Delgado: Figuratively Speaking

Carlos Delgado is a Colombian-Canadian artist who’s garnered international recognition in the past decade. Dividing his time between Bogotá and Toronto, his works explore a multitude of human expressions and interactions—as the subjects relate to each other as well as their imposed social constructs. Focused on capturing the subtleties in the tension of our daily routines, and the nuances of deeper human expression, his work becomes not only a social commentary, but also a reflection of how we create the world around us and our respective roles within it.

In his latest show, Figuratively Speaking, opening March 7, 2019 at Emily Harding Gallery, Delgado enhances these emotive paintings through gestural brushwork, drawing his figures with broad strokes, abstracting certain details while emphasizing their distinguishing features. Bold colours further play with the portraits and their settings, highlighting positive and negative space, distorting the 3-dimensionality, and demonstrating Delgado’s painterly confidence.

In the tradition of figurative painting, Delgado stands apart with a marked contemporary aesthetic. In his young career, he has been a winner of several art awards by the Toronto Arts Foundation, the Toronto Arts Council and the Canada Arts Council, as well as being an artist in residence at Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto. His work has been shown in group and solo shows in Canada, Colombia and Sweden, and is collected by private collectors in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. is a Colombian-Canadian artist who’s garnered international recognition in the past decade. Dividing his time between Bogotá and Toronto, his works explore a multitude of expressions and ranges of human interaction with the environment—as subjects interact with each other and their imposed social constructs. Focused on capturing the subtleties in the tension of our daily routines, and the nuances of deeper human expression, his work becomes not only a social commentary but also a reflection of how we create the world around us and our role within it.