In Bespoke, I look at my own painting to make paintings, and display them side by side so you can see what I see when I am rendering from a previous painting. Bespoke is a visual investigation I am currently working on, where I revisit a selection from fifteen free-styled figurative paintings I created during lockdown titled Rooms; and paint them again larger. I present bodies of works in relation to one another, to suggest a network of association rather than privileging a single artwork. Bespoke enables my studying Time, since intuition is engaged differently when I freestyle the oil studies where I have no idea what the result will be, from when I am anchored in an original to make larger versions. Aiming for a scale-shift, helps create a space for image to double down instead of disintegrate: the larger pieces also done in free style, express my doubled engagement with questions of femininity as I get to delve into the meaning of each work, like the card that is dealt to clear an original layout. Displayed like a duet side by side, the work may become circumstance; a sharing of the mystery involved in contemplating while painting, where the viewer can experience perceptual trajectories just as I do when I am making my work. Highlighter-colored backdrops, illuminate small events that happen during the transfer of imaginaries from one to the other. Those moving parts differentiate and identify us, not just from each other, but from the machine.
I am interested in how its us who shift in size as we cruise a pictorial installation and become cognizant of our own human scale. I look at Sandro Botticelli or Carlo Crivelli for the details; Sigmar Polke, Marie Trockel and Joelle Tuerlinckx for gestalt; or Kaye Donachie and Neo Rauch for their bravura brushwork. The dollhouse and Bob Gober for being lose on figurines, or for reminding me the best of René Magritte in actual rooms, and placing oddities in surprising places. I think about my time working for artists as well. I think of Vito Acconci, and his black and white NYC or Koons’ precision act and the bizarre focus needed to understand color constitution and mixing. I’ve had an artist assistant practice for two decades in New York, where I have observed artists in action as I help them make work in their studios. My Latin background comes to mind as I see and experience other’s endless ways to approximate making art. Just as we result from an immense mix of ethnicities, migration and the benefits of multiculturalism. Culture is pulsating with myriad ways of doing things. Our Latin American countries are made up of multiple continents as a result of “Mestizaje”, infused with affection and an intuitive wisdom that perhaps comes from there, from the mixture. Painting is a highly emotional, direct human act, and like “The Figure” in the center of the room, it connects reality with consciousness.
