History is subjective, there are so many blurred lines and so much distortion. Context and point of view is very important, one person's hero is another person's villain...it depends on who tells the story. As a gay Mexican-American I have always felt excluded and under-represented by history. By working from old photographs and using history as a backbone for a lot of my work, I can reweave these "lessons" of the past.

My paintings, prints, and animations explore contemporary nesting instincts and their manipulation by global economic systems. Mirroring network automation, I use custom code to push forward the practice of painting. Many of the paintings are large and temporary, made with house paint directly on the wall. The palettes are taken from color forecasts created just before the housing bubble burst.

My art is my life; I create all day every day. The most common questions posed to me are: what is your process, and what does your art stand for? My process goes through many sequences, all of which are challenging and rewarding and confusing. It's not my job to explain my art to the viewer. Sometimes I know what the story is to me, but the viewer may interpret it differently for himself.

Sensual Grotesque
From sketchpad to small drawing to larger drawing, this work evolves from a line drawing to a watercolor and ink embodiment of animal, human, and found form that seems reasonable and monstrous at the same time. The intimacy of hair and skin, recognizable to our private selves, is at once unsettling and gratifying. Although we think of ourselves as unique, our sexuality ties us undeniably to nature. The fluid slippage between human and animal reminds us - for better or for worse - that we are not as evolved as we would like to think.

“Perceptually a person is a viewer, who sees himself at the center of the world surrounding him. As he moves, the center of the world stays with him.”

–Rudolph Arnheim

My embroideries live within the conventions of portraiture yet deal with images from a popular website where desire, vanity, and arbitration play dominant roles. The use of thread is a reference to the social weaving of communities that we create on sites like facebook and myspace. My curiosity lies in the difference between the ways you perceive me versus the way I think I am perceived.

I draw about my world and the various influences that affect it. My emotions, ideas, people encountered, childhood memories, and religious beliefs have all become a part of the catalyst that determines my work. I create instances in time that are but a brief glimpse into another world, created for the purpose of indulging myself in a moment that is past.

The raw material for this group of images comes from tourist videos posted on various web sites. From these accidental flowing images, I carefully select a discrete moment. Ultimately what draws me to a particular image is not the subject matter but their potential properties of value and texture.

Connection is fleeting. A pregnant belly distends towards a potential big bang. Macro and micro scales collide in intimate exchanges. The chaotic abyss rebounds. There are no answers but you feel infinitely generous.

My work departs from a background in painting, which has evolved and combined with my collage sculptures. The work is heavily informed by consumer culture, as often individual parts of my compositions mainly consist of found and purchased objects. Camp and violent at the same time, I seek to explore the possibilities of mutation in color and form. My work gives visual reference to a “profound artifice.” Each of my collage works is in a way, a self-portrait, exploring aspects of my own personality, such as escapism, music, and the artificial highs and lows that come with life itself.

I am interested in how the perception of reality is colored by dreams, memory, superstition, religion, bias, prejudice, and fear. My mixed media work, in general, refers to the overlay of belief systems created by the individual to piece together their personal paradigm.