Charles Fernandez

Artwork by Charles Fernandez

Greetings. My name is Charles Fernandez. My friends call me Chig. This is the section where I imagine I'm supposed to wave around a grip of pretentious awards and credentials accrediting and validating my existence as an artist.

Well, you won't find any of those here.

No graduation from such-n-such academy with honors, no imperative list of exhibitions and showings to impress upon you.

What I do have here is some solid artwork. No preamble.

If that is what you've come here for, that is, the artwork and not some pedigree served up with a smile, then perhaps I won't disappoint.

My background and where I've been shouldn't matter in conjunction with my artwork, but perhaps it matters to some of you, so I will give it a shot. I have thirty years in government contracting for the Naval Weapons Center in the Mojave desert working as a technical Illustrator and engineer. My life changed after losing my family in an auto accident. Maybe it was the head injury that opened my mind to art, maybe just the loss. Whatever the case, the incident seemed to be a catalyst. A doorway. In my mind a fissure appeared and from it a wellspring of images began spilling out into this world, shifting from whimsical to dark a...