PAINTING
PAINTING
My paintings are layered explorations of identity, memory, and cultural overlap, deeply influenced by the experience of living in South Texas along the U.S.-Mexico border. I utilize an abstract visual language to investigate the dynamic interplay between structural order and spontaneous expression and the balance between precision and improvisation. Each composition is constructed through processes of accumulation and excavation—surfaces are built up with paint, pattern, and mark-making, then intentionally disrupted, scraped, or re-exposed. This method reflects the stratified nature of memory and the inheritance of culture.
Guided by a sensitivity to color, rhythm, and texture, my work merges gestural abstraction with architectural fragments, geographic markers, and symbolic motifs. The resulting imagery evokes the character of urban landscapes, woven textiles, and shifting terrains, suggesting movement across geographic, historical, and psychological boundaries. Painting is a way of storytelling and functions as a site where personal history intersects with collective experience, where surfaces simultaneously register presence and absence.
This body of work embraces contradiction, fluidity, transformation, and coexistence—qualities that mirror the lived reality of cultural hybridity. In bridging similarities and differences, I seek to construct meaning and articulate a sense of belonging within a complex and ever-shifting cultural landscape.
-Jesús De La Rosa