Born and raised in Tampico, Mexico, Luis Sottil has devoted his life to giving voice to the emotions of nature’s beauty. He enjoys a special relationship with the splendid wealth of his native flora and fauna that he likes to share with the world through his paintings, as well as his Talavera sculptures and leather creations.
30 years ago, with the purpose to capture his enthusiasm for nature, Sottil created the internationally renowned process of painting that he named Naturalismo. His originality of expression is a song to life that has been heard, with melodic rhythm, around the globe, to the extent that a number of notable universities have now incorporated Sottil’s Naturalismo into their academic curriculum. Given his mission to recreate the way nature feels, not necessarily the way nature looks, Sottil photographs, takes meticulous notes, and contemplates the exuberant habitat of his subjects, collecting natural pigments of unparalleled depth and intensity from the same environments where his studies take place.
By using colors extracted from nature itself, like the penetrating blue from the cochinilla insect, dramatic purple hues derived from the beet vegetable, and invigorating orange tones extracted from the achiote seed, among many others, Sottil allures our appetite for the splendid beauty of our natural world. The exuberant fauna, masterfully depicted on his canvas, come alive to interact with the viewer, reminding us of how much there is to learn from different animal behavioral patterns, thus becoming a subtle mirror of the virtues humanity should strive to pursue.
Sottil’s creative sensibility has evolved to vast levels of the imagination, to the extent that he is the first Latin American painter to be invited by the Walt Disney Company to become an official artist for Disney Fine Art. The proposal was to merge the captivating artistic expression of the Naturalismo process with the magic of Disney’s legendary stories. Sottil is represented by 14 galleries internationally including three of his own located at Disney, Orlando; El Paraiso De La Bonita in the Riviera Maya, Mexico and El Madrigal in Cuernavaca, Mexico. His works form part of over 3000 private and corporate collections around the globe, including two that make the list of the world’s top five: the King Fahd’s Royal Palace collection of Saudi Arabia and the Tupperware corporate art collection, in Orlando Florida.
Sottil was recently appointed the Minister of Arts and Culture in his home state of Tamaulipas, Mexico.