ARTIST STATEMENT
2022
My work focuses on creating narratives based on personal memories and experiences. My art serves as an autobiographical time capsule of the people and events that have impacted my life the most. The desire to remember certain moments in time is important to me due to my sentimentality for the past during this ongoing era of social distancing.
My work has so far been primarily based around my heritage, the resilience of family and more recently, the emotional distresses brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. As someone who is Mexican-American, family has been at the heart of everything I do, and has been a major source of emotional strength during this pandemic. I could not have gotten through my worst experiences of the pandemic without them. Losing numerous family members in a short timespan were painful reminders that tomorrow is never guaranteed, and became a drive to visually capture as many important faces and memories as I could to remember them. Moments in time become permanent through the artistic depiction of memory, and while difficult moments cannot be avoided, the support of a loved one can allow for the appreciation of better times. This work pays homage to the family members depicted and my relationships with them in contrast to painful moments of the pandemic. Certain audiences may find a familiarity in the work, whether it be because of a similar cultural background, or from similar experiences.
In creating these family narratives, I am most interested in figuring out what symbolism I can use to speak about a person or an experience. This is mostly done in the form of objects, color, and through personal symbols that hold meaning to me. The zigzagging and undulating motions of imaginary heartbeats and two vertical lines are a few symbols that are featured in my work. As Mexican culture is one that is very colorful, I’ve been working exclusively in oil and acrylic paint to capture that saturation. Mexican murals and the compositions of ancient low relief sculptures have served as inspiration.
The work takes on a notable shift as it moves to convey negative memories of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. I became focused on becoming more free in my approach to painting through a series of narrative portraits. This work utilizes expressive paint application as well as Covid-19 related objects such as face masks and gloves in order to document emotional distress and experiences with the illness, as well as frustration towards people’s responses to the Covid-19 reality. The surface of the paintings portray these feelings through their overall rough and awkward appearances using thick layers of oil paint, masks, and gloves. I created a series of distorted, abstract self portraits in which I painted over face masks and gloves in order to serve as a personal record for the overwhelming emotions I was feeling as a result of health issues and isolation. In addition, I painted a large, rude monster with multiple faces and arms that depict the carelessness of people that congregated and partied hard during the worst stages of the pandemic. Some of these arms are 3-D printed and come off of the canvas, presenting the viewer with multiple middle fingers, symbolizing the obnoxious behavior of these individuals.