gift / regalo Painting

text in braille: English: I touch you, you touch me, and your skin and mine become one. gift Spanish: Te toco, me tocas, y tu piel y la mía se vuelven una. regalo My work has always been related to my own life. My paintings stem from the close, intimate observation of human skin-that place where personal history is printed and narrated in each spot, each crease, and each wrinkle. We are what is visible in our skin; that makes us readable and therefore vulnerable. My painting wants to explore that vulnerability, that risk we encounter when under the gaze of others. It also wants to create untold stories, to capture past experiences and future hopes or longings (always implicit in the image) in the sheer physicality of the present moment. That´s why I use animal skin as my canvas. I want to build the character out of the painting and the skin, to merge together as one and to tell one whole story. The skin itself, has its marks and scars, the same as the character in the drawing has. They are put together to complement each other and build a story I love to work with animal skin because of the imperfection the skin comes with. I like to build the character not only with oil, but with every spot, wrinkle, scar or wound in the skin, so people can relate to their most intimate story, now that we actually can be read by print emotions in our skin. I use braille and sings for the deaf to explore different ways of communicate intimate, personal feelings rather than the obvious way, verbal, because we communicate with our mood, hands, faces, in fact, with our whole body.