“Southern Gothic” Painting

René Alvarado (b. 1972) The artist spent the first seven years of his life in the small Mexican town of El Manantial, Coahuila, just outside of Torrenón, before immigrating first to Wyoming and then to San Angelo. Moving between Mexico, Wyoming, and Texas, Alvarado found solitude within the familiar environments of his family, cultural heritage, the ranching communities that remained a constant feature of his life, and, ultimately, his art. Alvarado’s paintings also carry psychological depth. His works, rich with symbolism and emotive expression, celebrate the joys and trivialities of life and death. Alvarado’s art acts as a cathartic form of self- expression that enables him to communicate what words cannot capture. He attributes the dreamlike essence in his work to a childhood in which he was daydreaming and enraptured in fantasy, unaware of the hardships that burden adults. His childhood curiosity and desire to create is represented by the spiritual and ethereal quality of his paintings,which are often compared to surrealist dreamscapes. Alvarado’s paintings are conceptually layered with symbolism and have been called figurative surrealism. He studied at the San Antonio Art Institute and San Antonio College. The Texas Commission of the Arts and the Texas Legislature appointed him the 2009 Two-Dimensional Texas Artist of the Year. Biography by Ann Marie Leimer, Ph.D. Artist Statement My art narrates my life experiences through figurative surrealism. With imparted passion, the paintings represent social rhetoric, the richness of my cultural upbringing, and the enigma of my creative instincts and inner feelings. They give voice to the celebration of the human spirit as I see it and have experienced it.