Series ’98 Compelling Visions

I don’t want to be known as a compulsive person. However, there is something to be said for the question asked: Why Compelling Visions, what is going on here?

This is a difficult question to answer, as I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly what I was about: forty-five works on paper, all vertical, the image size: 7 x 4 inches. All employ my Sal-Zar Medium, they are best described as figurative abstract drawings. One after the other they tumbled out…not attempting to describe someone or something. A few images have been shown in Mexico: The Vértice Gallery in Guadalajara in a solo exhibition: La Emocio’n Detras del Gesto at Club de Industriales de Jalisco in 1999.

I’m happy with the simplicity in these images, and that they may speak to you. At least Mexico speaks to you through me, as I certainly have incorporated in these a resemblance of Mexican people and their ancient civilization. But here again we must be on our guard. Octavio Paz remarks: “The Mexican does not want to be either an Indian or a Spaniard. Nor does he want to be descended from them. And he does not affirm himself as a mixture, but rather as an abstraction: he is a man. He becomes the son of Nothingness. His beginnings are in his own self.” *

Series ’98: Compelling Visions is a distinct body-of-work. Although figurative it also includes New Realism concepts as it uses flattened space and simplified color. I am interested in this series in my own inner self. This is why I call the series “Compelling Visions”. A snapshot of my inner-mind; the vertical images in the tin frames evoke a daunting sense of my inner world.