I was born in Miami, Florida in 1981 and am of Cuban and Guatemalan descent. My interest in art began through the influence of my grandmother. She would drop me off once a week after school at the home of a Cuban artist she had met at church for oil painting lessons. From there, I continued private study under the instruction of Tete Pujol and I eventually enrolled in New World School of the Arts high school located in Miami, Fl. In 2001, I moved to San Francisco where I studied fine art at The Academy of Art University, graduating in 2007. In 2002, I began my career as a tattoo artist, and I continue to work in that profession today. I exhibited my paintings in San Francisco from 2004-2012, moved to Austin, Texas in 2013 where I currently paint, tattoo, and exhibit new works.
Artist Statement
I paint portraits and figures of others as a way of depicting various aspects of myself, the subjects acting almost as reflections or mirrors. As each painting progresses, I engage with the subject, resulting in sort of an unspoken dialogue that I can now have in a more tactile way. That dialogue continues and even deepens as each composition evolves, making the process of creating the work as important as the finished piece. To heighten the intensity of the interaction, I paint standing up so as not to constrict my movements, and in addition to using brushes, periodically raise the level of contact with the subject/myself by painting directly on the canvas with my fingers and hands. The physicality of this process enables me to have even more palpable and intimate encounters as I develop each piece, essentially creating portraits of myself in the guise of others. Along the way, I experience the push/pull of our psychological journeys through life, on the one hand in how people present carefully controlled and curated outward appearances, while on the other , connecting with the more vulnerable, chaotic and uncertain sides of ourselves. My hope is that by going through this process, I am able to create paintings that embody life's beauty as well as its shortcomings.