Since childhood, I have been fascinated by color. Not just for the beauty within the hue, or the value quality when placed on a surface, but for the emotional response that color evoked in me. Color, brought joy, and that joy was deeply spiritual.
This Espiritu is part and parcel to Spanish Culture. My aunt, who raised me, would place a glass of water on a table by the front door, the glass was placed there to ward off any negative energy coming into the apartment. She also made a monthly Bano, which is a bath of colored herb floral water, created to warded off and wash away bad spirits with the Bano’s water, we bathe with the Bano.
Many culture’s have similar beliefs. Christianity and the ritual of baptism readily comes to mind, as does the Navajo, who believe that the blue in a turquoise stone has power and possesses a spiritual life, is both a protective element and one that cleanses the spirit.
That is a large part of it. I have been fascinated by color and mark making as a spiritual force. A force that is at once tangible and vaporous, my whole life. Color and abstraction are imbedded in the psyche of Spanish culture and are an essential part of the Espiritu in which I paint: from the Light, through me, on to the canvas.
In viewing the paintings, I want people to experience these flowing and fragmented forms, and the mystery that captures the inherent struggle between color, brushstroke, and meaning, not to seek a resolution, but to experience color’s spiritual life, as it excites their unconscious response between emotion, myth, and beauty.