Why My Paintings Reveal Rather Than Entertain
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By Abisay Puentes – Cuban-American Symbolist Artist
Introduction: Art That Refuses to Merely Please
Since the beginning of my artistic journey, I knew my work would never belong to the realm of entertainment.
Not because I reject beauty, nor because I ignore aesthetic pleasure,
but because my paintings were born from a different place —
from the need to say what cannot be said in simple words.
I do not paint to seduce.
I do not paint to decorate.
I do not paint to fill spaces.
I paint to tear the veil.
To reveal what lies beneath.
To confront what the human being prefers not to face.
To expose the wound — and the truth that emerges from it.
This is why my paintings do not aim to entertain.
They aim to awaken.
1. Entertainment Numbs; Revelation Disturbs
We live in a culture obsessed with distraction.
Everything — music, films, politics, social media — seems designed to help us avoid thinking too deeply, feeling too deeply, going too far inward.
Entertainment works like an anesthetic:
it soothes, but it does not heal.
My art cannot function that way.
My paintings are not a break from the world;
they are a confrontation with it.
La Parábola — the universe beneath my entire body of work — is the story of a sedated man discovering that comfort was his prison.
How could I represent that truth with pleasant images?
With agreeable colors?
With compositions designed to relax?
No.
Revelation always unsettles.
For that reason, my paintings confront the viewer rather than entertain them.
2. Beauty Is Not in the Color — It Is in the Truth
People often tell me:
“Your paintings are intense, deep, dense — even painful.”
And yes, they are.
But the beauty I seek is not the superficial beauty of decorative harmony.
It is the beauty born from truth exposed, the beauty that emerges from spiritual impact — the beauty that cannot be consumed lightly.
True beauty does not live on the surface.
It lives in what transforms.
A painting that entertains may be pleasing.
But a painting that reveals —
that one can mark a person for a lifetime.
3. My Paintings Reveal Because They Are Born from Pain and Faith
I cannot separate my art from my life:
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exile
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my Christian faith
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disappointment with humanity
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spiritual blindness
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years of questions, silence, and searching
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the poems of La Parábola
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series like Brumas, Paradox, and Vértigo
All of this forms a single wound in movement.
I cannot turn that into entertainment.
It would betray who I am.
My paintings reveal because they arise from what I have had to face within myself:
my emptiness,
my confusion,
my collapse,
my awakening,
my encounter with truth.
4. Revelation Happens When the Viewer Enters the Work
A person looking at decorative art might say:
“This is pretty.”
But someone entering my paintings does not say “pretty.”
They say something more intimate:
“This confronts me.”
“This reminds me of something inside myself.”
“This hurts, but I don’t want to look away.”
“This is telling me something.”
That reaction is not entertainment.
It is revelation.
And when the viewer listens to the music I compose — born from the same place as my paintings — that revelation deepens.
The work becomes a mirror.
And in that mirror, the viewer sees themselves.
Revelation happens there.
5. Entertainment Provides Answers; Revelation Makes Questions
Entertaining art says:
“Relax. Everything is fine.”
Revealing art asks:
“Who are you within this fog?”
“What truth have you avoided?”
“What machine are you connected to without realizing it?”
“What part of you is asleep?”
“And do you want to wake up?”
My series — Imposibilitados, Desvanecimiento, Brumas, Mecanikalgia, Paradox, Vértigo —
were not created to reassure the viewer.
They were created to return their essential questions.
Art that disturbs is art that transforms.
Art that entertains is art that fades.
6. Art That Reveals Requires Responsibility from the Artist
Revelation is not easy.
It demands honesty.
It demands vulnerability.
It demands exposing my own shadows before speaking of the world’s shadows.
It demands confronting my faith with humility and fear.
It demands walking through the fog before asking the viewer to cross it.
The artist who reveals must first be revealed.
That is why my art is spiritual —
not because it tries to preach,
but because it emerges from the deepest human need:
the need for truth.
7. Awakening Is Not Entertainment — It Is Transformation
The man in La Parábola awakens after ten thousand years walking in circles.
When he opens his eyes, he recognizes:
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his slavery
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the machine
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the fog
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the lie
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his fragility
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and ultimately the truth
That awakening is not pleasant.
It is sacred.
Revelation destabilizes, hurts, liberates, transforms.
This is why my art does not entertain:
it was created to awaken.
Conclusion: To Paint in Order to Reveal Is an Act of Faith
If I wanted to entertain,
I would have chosen a different path.
But I was not called to paint to entertain.
I was called to paint to reveal,
to confront,
to awaken,
to open spaces where truth can shine even through the mist.
My art does not decorate rooms.
It transforms souls.
That has been my mission from the beginning,
and it will remain so as long as I have breath.
And if even one person awakens — just a little —
while standing before my paintings,
then my work has fulfilled its purpose.
