Artist Statement

In my work I have delved into using imagery that explores the way the spiritual image transforms and functions within a cultural context. I have done this by having religious art as an influence in the formulation of the various compositional schemes, images, and forms existing in my work. This influence also serves as subject that documents a means of responding to something that exist in both my memory and my environment. The devotional image can convey an intrinsic sense of race, history and language while mirroring the identity of that idol’s originating culture. I find this most visible in the summation's of an icons impact upon those who view it. By developing imagery that incorporates this influence as a point of reference for my work, I proceed to combine the issues of analytic formal invention with the complex narratives of both singular and cultural identity. This allows for the topic of how mass influence is a condition of one's perception, be raised and scrutinized through the language of art. The cultural specifics of the iconic image embodies one of my strongest concerns, which is to engage the concept of the collective verses the individual. This interest is a result of my relationship with “Chicano Art of the South West” and my interest in “Contemporary Latin American Art”. This has caused the identity of the works I have developed to consistently reflect upon an experience that has not been completely American nor completely Mexican. My work is deeply rooted in this relationship and undergoing this has allowed my work to have and convey the experience of being a cultural outsider. A circumstance that has forced me to see the difficult reality of “otherism” as an opportunity for personal reinvention and create art that is developed from a combination of a determined force of will and rigorous independent choice. In a sense being influenced by cultures of many, however always speaking as a culture of one. I have chosen to assert this experience by doing works of art that are invented symbols and images that build sequentially to form a pictorial compositions that make references to the autonomously invented mark, language, and icon. This approach gives both the subjects and influences of my work a means of responding to something that dwells in my remembrances and my surroundings. This allows for a mediation of the visual concerns of formalism to coexist with the character and identity of my ethnic motifs. I do this to emphasize the core of my narrative beliefs. My work is a visual strategy that is deeply steeped in the traditions of modernism, that has been reinterpreted through the act of working from a cultural theoretical framework that is applied to the urges of the will to create.

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Vita