A familia pintora que vaga polo mundo

«A familia pintora que vaga polo mundo» — the painting family that wanders the world — is what the board at the front of the stand says, and it is fairly literal. Guille Outes' work does not hang on a wall waiting to be visited: it travels, goes up wherever there is a fair, and comes down at closing time.

What travels are the paintings — brought to paper, printed in short runs and signed — and the t-shirts that come out of those same drawings. None of them pays much attention to the world as it actually is: cows with brightly coloured horns, houses piled up a hillside that does not exist, boats that skip perspective entirely. Much of what is in a painting was never in front of anyone. The fantasy is not the decoration — it is the material.

Which is why there is nothing you need to know in order to get them. No prior reading, no museum vocabulary, and they work just as well at six as at sixty. That is the only test we care about: this art is for everyone, in the most literal and least solemn sense of the phrase.

Family is the right word, and not only for the people who put the stand up. Anyone who comes over ends up inside it: whoever takes a painting home, whoever stands looking for a while and takes nothing, and above all the child who sits down to paint. Ask Guille about a good day at a fair and the answer will not be about what sold. It will be about the stand being surrounded by children painting.