Manifesto

Being an artist isn’t something that I always wanted to be. Sure, I wanted to be creative, but that never meant doing something that completely depended on me and what was in my head and what I could bring into the world and what I wanted to do. Art excites me more than anything else in the world. It is something that can be universally felt, something that crosses the barrier of language, something that connects everyone to everyone else and everything else. Artists are here to connect and see things that others can’t. We are a breed of constant observers who are also constantly wrapped up in ourselves. Making things is the only way we know how to communicate what we observe. Humans are what interest me. There’s no two alike, even if their DNA are the same, as with twins, they are still different in at least one way, which makes them completely different. We are all different, on the outside and on the inside. We have different colors in our skin, different eye colors, different nose shapes, different lip shapes, and, yet, we are all the same. We need essentially the same things to survive: food, companionship, oxygen. We are all God’s creations that have no reason to fight other than the reasons we create for ourselves. There are so many different reasons behind why I am fascinated by and want to paint and sculpt the figure. It has to do with physical and spiritual concerns. I love how many colors can exist in a single person’s skin, no matter their ethnicity. I like to see how this complex thing operates and interacts with the world around it and how it creates worlds within itself. I am always worried about what people think about me and my body, which is something that makes me observe the bodies of others, not to scrutinize, but to see what is different and beautiful in each person. I don’t think that anyone is ugly or unattractive but we are different. The human body is one of the greatest things that God created and it wasn’t only created to be a sexual instrument. The body is the artist’s greatest instrument, not to be seen just as somethings so minimal as an object for someone else’s pleasure. I think that the figure is universal and is able to communicate so much. It can communicate things that I have an incredibly hard time communicating. It is adequate enough while I feel like I am not adequate enough in the sense of existing in the art world. I struggle with feeling like enough and I feel like the figure is something that will always be seen as enough. The figure will always be relevant to the world and, most importantly, to myself. I will always be able to understand it even when others don’t understand my work, which feels like all the time. I think that the work is for myself and not for others but also it can be for others. It’s not something I own once I make it, it’s owned by everyone and everything. Art is something that connects me to everyone and everything around me.