I left my native country, Venezuela, fourteen years ago. Perhaps the distance of time and miles has allowed me to see my country with a new clarity Venezuela is endowed with plentiful natural resources, yet victimized by corrupt leaders. My yearly visits have revealed a shameful disparity between political posturing and the harsh realities of my homeland. Poverty is palpable throughout the urban landscape, even though Venezuela sits on the largest oil reserve of the western hemisphere. Two contrasting yet interdependent worlds live and breathe in proximity: the scant privileged classes, who enjoy lives of limitless possibilities; and the poor, who endure desperate lives in the slums that house most of the urban population. These slums serve as a visible reminder of the tragedy of the ignored. My artworks grow out of the relationship between vast natural resources and the pervasive and expanding poverty of Venezuela. I attempt to re-create the urban landscape in a series of fragile, unsteady structures that respond in a chaotic way to the city’s uneven topography. I build the surfaces of my paintings by working with multiple layers of thick oil impasto and a palette that includes primary colors similar to those found in Venezuelan national symbols.
