Though I credit my introduction and formation in visual art to the US and American artists, my work has always observed the fact that I didn’t have an American childhood. This has always lingered as a story yet to fully dive into in order to resolve.
I’m simultaneously working on two series of paintings in which I’m exploring my childhood in Nicaragua and the impact it had in my life and family relationship till present day.
The process is a direct conversation with my inner child, allowing myself to depict each memory as it was experienced and at times incorporating my writing and poetry.
In each piece I’m tackling my own emotional, spiritual, and developmental fractures, inflicted by experiencing war, trauma, the disintegration of family through migration, loss, and how this ultimately shaped me.
This new approach offers a way of sorting out what’s part of my own texture vs what was projected onto me in childhood.
Though my work has always been very emotionally charged and has addressed various psycho-cultural topics; I’m now addressing subjects I found hard to talk about or paint in representational works.
The abstracts involve a lot of non dominant handwriting in which memories are recorded on to the surface and then become opaqued by color and contrasted by jagged lines.
This way of painting feels quite different and at times challenging, but I find great gains in learning more about my own story and getting to discover new things I didn’t know about myself and family history.