After the Tsunami # 1 Painting

I am primarily a self-taught artist working in photography, painting, video, installation, mixed media and sound. I'm exploring the challenge of experimentation, the expansion of boundaries and migrations across artistic media. I was born in Honduras, moved to New York City as an adolescent in 1965, and graduated from the State University of New York, Stony Brook in 1974. While working at a dead-end job in 1975, I started teaching myself photography. I completed a course in basic color printing at the International Center of Photography (ICP), and returned six months later to share my first portfolio of color photographs of New York City. It received a very enthusiastic reception from the director of the Education Department who convinced me to show the work at the ICP in 1976. That show, entitled "New York," was my first solo exhibition. After working in the photographic medium for a few years, I moved to Washington, DC, and in the fall of 1978 began to teach myself painting and drawing in a bold and colorful portraiture style. I was fortunate enough to sell a painting at the beginning of my career to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Hirshhorn. That sale helped to publicize my work. I have continued to paint for the last thirty-four years. My site-specific installations date back to 1988. In 1992, my installations took a dramatic turn. Thousands of hand-painted and hand-cut recycled supermarket brown paper bags of different sizes became a new unifying element surrounding my representational images of animals and mythological personages. These installations, alone with similar paintings, reflect my concerns with ecological and environmental issues. In 2000, I began producing video and, more recently, sound and mixed media. My work has been shown in both individual and group exhibitions in museums and galleries in the U.S.A., Mexico, Spain, Canada, Brazil, Honduras, Cuba, Hungary, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and other countries. In the last thirty-six years, I have had over forty solo painting, photography and installation exhibitions and participated in more than sixty national and international group and traveling shows. I am twice the recipient of fellowships in painting from the National Endowment for the Arts (1985 and 1989), the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities (1982 and 1985), the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (1993 and 1998) and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1991 and 2000).