kristenirby:

Though he considers himself to be “cursed by the love gods,” Alexander Esguerra is on a mission to help couples capture their love-on canvas-through his experiential art movement Love & Paint, which he recently presented in a show entitled “Vernal Equinox” at The Box in New York City.  A week after the wild success of Vernal Equinox, Esguerra’s seventh exhibition, we met at Café Select and spoke in great detail about his life and work so that I could capture the man behind the love and underneath the paint.

Alexander Esguerra.

On being laughed at by the love gods…

“Yeah, it’s like the love gods said we’re going to give you this amazing idea and all of the love that you’ll surround yourself with, you’re never going to get it.  It’s kind of fucked up.”

In regards to sex as a source of inspiration and motivation…

“I always get kind of weird when people bring in the word sex because originally the project was called ‘It’s Just Sex.’  At that point it was just sex but I realized there was this element that I was trying to ignore and it was me trying to dismiss everything as just sex.  I realized it wasn’t just sex, it was love!  I started to realize the difference between sex and love.  Sex is an active love, whether is a one-night stand or just playing around.  We use sex as an excuse to find companionship.  I still think that we are all lonely.  Sex does motivate me but love motivates me more than sex.”

His lovers are…

“My lovers?  Special.  I think I have a knack for weeding out the bitches, the fakes.   I’m close with almost every girl I’ve ever dated or hooked up with.  Very rarely do I have a break up with someone and we never talk again.  We’re all very close and it’s not because of sex, it’s because I chose awesome people to be with and we happened to have had sex.”

Ardent fans, groupies, stalkers…

“Totally!  I’ve been getting hit up from a lot of promoter douche bags.  People come to the bar ((Miss Lily’s) more often, random text messages, a lot of Facebook requests.  It’s funny! I’ve been accepting everyone’s friend request, not because I want to have a lot of friends, but because I want to have a larger network to advertise to.  I look at Facebook as business.  As this is growing I’ve realized that I want to keep my circle tighter.

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