Jose L Cuadra

Portrait statement

My interest for portraits is driven by my interest on people. People that I know or people I work with or simply people in general. I am attracted by the features that describe their faces , because every one of them describes an event in their lives.

After so many years during my life time, of moving from one country to another, meeting people, changing friends, becoming a member of new communities and creating new family circles, THE PORTRAIT has become an essential part of my quotidian life. Is my way of recording emotions, situations, and history, of recognizing times in my life, important or not so. Portraits help me to reconnect with old stories, faces and places.

All these years living as a foreigner in multiple countries looking for my truly identity as a painter, I finally realize that is around the portrait that I can connect with a lost or forgotten part of my history, my family history, my friends history. In a way is like reconnecting with my inner self.


Paintings from the back

Painting people from the back presents a momentary pause/ void to the person' s identity, which is left to the viewer to construct. Otherwise whom the person is about remains a mystery.
Somewhat conceal...

Johnson State College, Johnson, Vermont US, Visual Arts.