Artist Statement

I consider myself a multimedia artist, experimenting and creating series of work in drawing and printmaking, until very recently, where I have shifted to oil painting as a primary medium.  The plasticity of oil paint and pastels add an essential component to the process of creating the work that defines my current practice. The ever-changing landscapes of South Florida have recently become the subject matter of my work in painting. Oil paint allows for a constant redefinition of composition and space, just as what driving through South Florida has taught me about adaptation and modification. It has been an arduous exercise in observation and memorization as the swift drive through scenes become snapshots that I later paint from memory. I am particularly interested in the concrete structures of bridges and separators, as well as the construction machinery that populate any given area and its surrounding landscape. They speak of the constant modernization and development that is going on in urban and suburban areas, often at the expense of devastation, obliterating natural spaces. Sadly, this has proven to be a not so gradual process and it has become somehow permanent – there is always construction work somewhere and that fact augurs an ongoing change that gets recorded in my work. I have discovered through this series a genuine interest in describing the process of transformation these urban areas go through albeit the splendor of color and light that nature displays as a complement. There is beauty in the brushstroke that defines a somewhat tragic event and I believe I can redeem some of that damage by representing a parallel creative universe in contrast to the harsh and real one.