BIOGRAPHY - Carlos Madrid (Born 1950)

I was born in the Andes Mountains of Peru in 1950.  I spent a vibrant early childhood in a magical landscape, exposed to the rhythms and colors of daily rural life, and later moved with my family to Lima.  An extremely religious grandmother influenced my parents to register me in a Catholic School run by the Mercedary order of priests.  The years at that school and the mandatory church services submerged me in an environment filled with religious art.  My early exposure to Catholic, Andean and Incan traditions was an enormous influence on my developing artistic imagination.

At the age of eighteen in 1968, I left Peru for Israel eager to see other cultures.  Israel and Jerusalem were for me a first encounter with the larger world.  I found the ancient Holy City and its surrounding landscape, like the Andes Mountains of my childhood, filled with magic, history, religion and mysticism.  I came to cherish the silence and beauty I experienced in the desert, temple, church and ancient ruin.  These experiences continued to enrich me and reinforced my deep desire to become an artist.  The war of 1973 drove me to look for a new home and in 1974 I accepted a scholarship at Parsons School of Design.  Although I moved to America and settled in Manhattan, I have traveled widely in North and South America, Europe and India, fulfilling my early childhood dream of seeing the world and its different cultures, all together I have lived and worked in ten different countries.

Since 1980, I have dedicated myself completely to mastering the drawing and painting techniques of the past, including the egg tempera-oil mixed technique which I learned from the painter Ernst Fuchs in Austria.  During the late 80's and early 90's I began exhibiting in group-shows and continued to further my training with various teachers.  This led me to eventually contact the great Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum and in the year 2000 I was invited to come to Norway to work at his side.  Since the year 2000 I have been showing every year in Norway, Italy, England and the USA.

My guides are the great Masters of the past and I am totally committed to the achievement of excellence in my craft and to the tradition of story telling through images.

I have immense gratitude for a very special and unique person, my wife and guardian Angel Elizabeth for believing in me.  Without her love and support I would have never achieved who I am now as an artist and as a person.   She is still looking after me from high up over the rainbow.  She left this world in my arms on November 10th 2012.

I am also deeply indebted to my Yoga Master Sri Yogiraj Swami Buaji for all he taught me in the great tradition of Yoga and meditation.   He left his physical body in 2010 at the ripe age of 110.  He has been cremated in India and his ashes dispersed in the Yamuna River.