Artist’s Statement

My current work is a culmination of experience with color, design and painting. It stems from the desire to find familiarity through the process of mark making with various tools. These painting experiments are attempts at capturing form that feel as if they manifested from memory. The idea is to move fast and spontaneous while attacking the surface with different tools and media. These tools include palette knives, spraying canisters, needle nose ink dispensers and anything I have found on the street through the years. I prefer discarded things like cardboards, plastics and broken objects with sharp points. I use both porous and slick surfaces. I use traditional media including acrylics, inks, watercolors and old mixtures that I have collected over the years saved in 35 millimeter film canisters. I like to think that this process is not dissimilar to the way I approach digital experimentation.

Biography

Born in Cardenas, Cuba Diaz’s family migrated to the States in 1982 stopping in Costa Rica and Mexico along the way. His family established themselves in Coral Gables, FL where a young Diaz discovered drawing. He would go on to attend a commercial art magnet high school and then major in Illustration at the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore. Luis Diaz worked as an illustrator and designer for product, television, web, print and interactive for over 15 years. He also considers himself a storyteller and cartoonist. He currently writes and paints in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

1120

Dualism

Experimentation has been essential in my artistic growth. I like to move from familiar representational shapes to abstracted elements in a play that both draw the viewer in while trying to achieve an emotional resonance that ties the work together. This duality creates variation that is not simply an esthetic choice, but works at giving the viewer a plethora of visual cues expressing seemingly infinite responses.Artist’s Links

artist’s website:  www.LuisDiazArt.com