Reinier Gamboa
My artistic practice requires me to delve deeper into the layers of my belief systems and interrogate assumptions in order to understand how my perception of reality influences my work. I am interested in learning about different philosophies that investigate the nature of human experience and our common bonds—for example, Carl Jung’s ideas of the collective unconscious, Joseph Campbell’s ideas of the Monomyth, and Taoism’s embrace of reality as an indivisible totality.
My painting process is exploratory and intuitive. I usually start a new painting without a visualized outcome in mind. Instead, I often begin with one element—such as the subject, a color palette, a type of mark making, or an environment—and then I embrace a stream of consciousness approach to develop the image until I feel I’ve completed the story. It feels like I am solving a puzzle.