Artist Statement

I make art for myself. Hidden away in a sketchbook, it’s an intimate recording of my expression and thought. It’s my diary. It is the only way I know how to express accurately what goes on inside my thoughts; it translates appropriately what I want to say, and what I don’t. I have complete control over how it comes out; I can erase, cover, curve here, change color there, etc.

Controlling my art is the most important reason for which I have kept at it. Young, I was moving from place to place, never rooting myself, never truly at home. A teenager, I was disregarded, disrespected, and disengaged from my daily life. Now as an adult, I’m caught in the flow of romance, career, bills to pay. Still, I feel it’s the only thing that has never left me unless I wanted it to; it is the one stable thing I have been able to work on at my own rhythm. My art is for me, as it has been from my birth and as it will be ‘til my death.

Completely controllable, but also portable, personal, and precise, drawing is the most appropriate medium for my work. I value the colored pencil, the marker, and the wax crayon, as I know them from the inside-out, having accompanied me throughout my life.

I like to draw when I’m between stages; between consciousness and dreamland. Making a mark on the paper is my consciousness controlling what my unconscious says; it interprets what my brain and heart are fighting about. The dichotomy between passion and duty, heart and thought, is always something on my mind. I feel as if the two are Romeo and Juliet; destined to cause each others’ deaths, and when united never fare well for long. I hope that by drawing both together, the curse will be broken and I will learn to live with both equally.

Recurring in my art, there are two possibilities: either the animal, symbol of the heart, will be ruled by human thought; or the human, a product of thought, will be governed by his emotions. I give men’s minds a dog’s body; I give the fox the personality man has symbolically attributed to it. I give man bestial movement through gestural use of line and color, turning him into a victim of his own emotions.

I give expression to things that are considered as having a lack of conscience. I do not underestimate the dog or the cartoon character. In my head, both are alive, symbolically, and on paper their traces are left as documentation of my mental state at the time of their conception.

In sum, art is my therapy: once the fight is marked down, the energy is taken with it and my mind becomes clear once again, ready to take on things that I do not control fully, ready to take on life.