Artist Statement

Artist Statement
As an artist, I tend to create work that reflects who I am and what I believe in. I am a young Hispanic male who is interested in my culture and my surroundings. One of the strongest pieces that I made this year is the Southeast Corridor piece. This group of photographs? are of the Southeast Corridor in Boston, MA. I started off by taking pictures of it from different angles to convey different subject matter. When I looked at the pictures, I started to think about positives, like the “El Convite Banilejo”, an annual Dominican party at Stony Brook station. On this day, every Dominican in Boston from Bani comes, buys food, listens to some music and socializes with other Dominicans. But there have also been some negative events that happened there, like the shooting of a young man from Jamaica Plain. I started to make my photographs look like evidence of good and bad occurrences. In in my art work I tend to focus on my surroundings and also I try to find a connection with my heritage.

In the creation of my art work I tend to explore different media to express my intention for the art. I am not married to one medium, I love to explore and figure out how the medium can be useful in my art. But one medium has capture my attention: paint. Ever since junior year when I joined the Mural Crew. I really saw how with only paint, you can create a piece of artwork that the community can appreciate and also help them by making their community a better place. I'm currently making mural murals around Boston and I'm going to continue making murals.

My motivation as an artist has always been life. My motivation comes from everything from nature’s patterns to current political issues. All of my ideas come from looking around and observing what’s happening around me and how that is affecting me. What motivated me to create my new series was the new law that passed in Arizona that is if you get stop by an officer for some reason and if he thinks you’re an illegal or undocumented immigrant then he has the right to check your proof of citizenship. If you don’t have proof of being a citizen in the United States, then he can detain until you can prove that you are a citizen. But my question is how illegal or undocumented immigrants are supposed to look? In my series, there will be 6 portraits and for the audience to guess who is Latino or not. This series shows how you really can’t tell who’s Latino or not by the way they look and that Arizona is basically racial profiling, which is illegal.
I started off by looking at myself in the mirror, wondering how I see myself as an artist. Trying to figure out how to combine my culture and my political views into one to make a series of art work that has a powerful/meaningful statement. I looked in the mirror and saw how in reality I’m Dominican but when people first see e, they guess that I’m Indian or Native American by the way I look. Many people thinks that I’m Indian or Native American because of my skin complexion, my hair and how my face structure. So I started think “Hey”, I’m perfect for one of the portraits. I started with myself and painted the self portrait. In my self-Portrait I capture that Indian/Native American look so that the viewer can see that you can’t tell whose Latino or not by the way they look. As an artist I learned a lot out of the creation of the self portrait. I explored my color pallet and also how to capture a person look.
My Second piece is another portrait of a person who I think is another great example for my series. Her name is Tiziana and she is Dominican/Italian. The first day I meet her, I never thought that she would be Latino. She has a European look and has no typical “Latino” look. She has nice, long golden hair that complements her skin-tone. She not a typical “Hispanic” in looks, but if you get to know her, you’ll notice that she Hispanic. During painting the portrait, I explore my color pallet by mixing different colors to match her skin-tone. Also I figure out a composition that would capture her personality. As an artist I learned many things from painting this portrait, like about proportion and how that’s important in capturing a person’s look.

Beside from my self Portrait, I'm working own another piece that I mention on blog 5. I'm currently paint a portrait of my friend Tizzy. I Started to look through some of Tizzy's pictures and grab one that had a interesting composition that fits my theme. I Started to sketch it out and i gave her a base tone. I'm going to start refining her proportion and using the new techniques from the last self portrait.

I have been working on my self portrait piece for like a week now and so far it’s been going good but I still having troubles with mixing the skin tones. I have been trying different mixes and still haven't found the right mix. I have the shapes of my face down. I’m still sticking to my original theme. I feel very strong about the theme and about how I’m going to show my theme.

So for my first piece I'm going to do a self portrait. i started off with a few fast sketches first then grab a mirror and a board. I map out my basic face. Now I'm going to start painting a basic color and just mapping out where my shadows are on my face..

my final product

Now i have started to paint the basic colors and just creating the images. Then my next step is to bring out the form in the symbols. Also im probably going to add more symbolism to the piece to add for value to the piece.