2026: Buffalo AKG group show
Super excited & honored to be included in this show alongside so many artists I have long admired-
Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way , curated by Andrea Alvarez, explores contemporary Latinx artists’ innovations and interventions within established traditions of painting, inviting discussion on a variety of themes and revealing the diversity and expansiveness present within the field. The fifty-eight artists in the exhibition—and those in the Latinx field more broadly—encourage us to interrogate the continued relevance of boundaries, from political borders to disciplinary confines. This exhibition therefore celebrates artists whose expressions are first and foremost personal and subjective, but whose heterogeneous and culturally specific interventions enrich one another and the history of American and contemporary art, two fields from which such artists have been historically excluded. Inspired by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem “[Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way],” the show celebrates abundance and presents a vision of Latinx art that is, like the diaspora itself, infinitely complex.
ABOVE: “Hyphenated Nature: Northern Florida-Cuban Painting Relations (after Carta)”, 30” x 78”. (left & right are on-site , oil on canvas paintings & middle is acrylic & handmade Cuban soil-pigment on canvas (2020) and is my contribution to the “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way” exhibition.
For years I have been searching for ways to hyphenate my perceptually based on-site painting practice with my conceptually based interest in connecting with the Cuban landscape and with the history of the Cuban artists who painted it. This triptych is composed of two Northern Florida paintings made “en plein-air” over the course an entire day at St Mark‘s Nature Preserve, which bookend an Albers-based square work that has an image of a Cuban landscape painted by using Cuban soil pigment. This middle piece is based on a famous painting “Las Malangas” by Valentin Sanz Carta that is in El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana. I originally saw this painting on my first visit to Cuba in 1999 and was immediately drawn to it. I chose to use this piece as the hyphenation for my two on-site works because I saw elements in the Carta painting in each of my works. - The painting on the left was of a creek with tannic waters surrounded by dense vegetation and trunks leading over it. The work on the right had a sable palm that was similar to the ones in the Carta painting.
I created my Albers Square grid foundation by pulling colors from my on-site paintings and then repainted a section of the Carta work using actual Cuban soil, which I ground-up by hand into pigment. By literally superimposing “Cuba” (in the form of soil/pigment) on Western Bauhausian modernism, I embraced the modernist grid while simultaneously bursting out of it and rejecting it with the Cuban vernacular landscape, and in so doing found a new culturally and pictorially hyphenated space to paint.
The show’s intergenerational and regionally broad dialogue is reflected in seven thematic groupings: (New) Histories, offering new perspectives on personal, cultural, and global histories; Bodies & Figures, representations of and by marginalized people, considering the importance of the body, and who is or isn’t seen in an image; Identity/Place, a consideration of how identity and place shape each other with a diasporic lens; Land/tierra, varied approaches to land and the built environment, from the material to the imaginary; Community, highlighting various communities—artistic, blood, and chosen—and their importance to populations within the diaspora; Pinturx, contemporary Latinx approaches to traditional painting genres like still life and portraiture; and Abstractions, exploring centuries-long Indigenous and European abstract traditions still in use by artists today.
Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way is organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and curated by Curator Andrea Alvarez. It will be followed by a national tour including presentations at the Des Moines Art Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the Phoenix Art Museum, and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle.
In Nature’s Studio: Two Centuries of American Landscape Painting
This core show is organized by the Reading Public Museum, Reading Pennsylvania and augmented by landscape-themed works from the permanent collection of the Art Museum of South Texas. It runs January 22- May 3, 2026.
Works in the Reading collection combine early depictions of bucolic North American vistas—intimate forest interiors, sweeping panoramic views of natural wonders, and dramatic images of the untamed land and sea—with scenes of Europe, the Near East, and South America.
In addition to works by nineteenth-century landscape artists such as Thomas Birch, Frederic Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Worthington Whittredge, William Trost Richards, Hermann Herzog, and Aaron Draper Shattuck, the exhibition also examines the late-nineteenth century shift to Impressionism and Tonalism at the turn of the century by painters including George Inness, N. C. Wyeth, Childe Hassam, Edward Willis Redfield, John Fulton Folinsbee, John Mulhaupt and Robert Spencer. These movements captured the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere by employing new and innovative techniques including painting out-of-doors, en plein air.
Cumulative Nature: Layered View (WA) , 48” x 36”, oil on canvas, 2008 (in the permanent collection of the Art Museum of South Texas)
The expanded exhibition explores the progression from naturalistic depictions of pastoral landscapes to the stylized and individual impressions of time and place reflect the sensibilities of visual culture in the United States over the course of two centuries. The on-site (en plein air) painting above is my piece in this show.
Twenty-One Distinguished Artists of the 21st Century
is a showcase of 21 Cuban contemporary artists from rising mid-career to international masters.
This event highlights over 75 works, including paintings, sculptures and assemblages by the most exciting voices in today’s global art scene.
Artists include:
Alfredo Sosabravo, Manuel Mendive, Julio Larraz, Clara Morera, Humberto Calzada, Tomás Sánchez, Roberto Fabelo, DEMI, José Bedia, Lilian Garcia-Roig, Belkis Ayón, Joel Besmar, Juan Roberto Diago, Vicente Hernández, Giosvany Echevarría, Jorge Luis Santos, Enrique Casas, Irina Elén González, Miguel Florido, Yasiel Elizagaray and Danuel Méndez.
Show opens March 6 at Cernuda Arte, 3155 Ponce de Leon Blvd. Coral Gables, FL 33134
M-F: 10-6pm & Sat: 12-5. 305-461-1063
2006: MacDowell Colony Residency
Founded in 1896 by the composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, the pianist Marian MacDowell, the MacDowell Colony is one of the oldest and most distinguished and prestigious artists residency programs in the nation. It is nested in 450 acres of wooded lands on the outskirts of Peterborough New Hampshire. The mission of The MacDowell Colony is to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which they can produce enduring works of the imagination. The sole criterion for acceptance to The MacDowell Colony is artistic excellence. Fellows in the fields of Architecture, Composition, Film, Interdisciplinary Artists, Theatre Artists, Visual Artists and Writers are chosen by a selection committee comprised of leaders in their respective fields from a very large pool of international applications.I had been wanting to return to the North East during the fall season since my visit to Vermont in September of 1996 when I was a Visiting Artist Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center so I was thrilled to be able to get a fall residency at MacDowell from Mid-Sept to Mid-Oct. The grounds of the colony are covered with maple, birch, and beech trees and they were in full glory during my visit. The display of high intensity yellows, oranges, reds and the full range of greens allowed me to explore and use pigments and colors in my on-site works like never before. I had stocked up on my cadmiums before I went but had to buy more while I was there!My time there was beyond great and I was able to create 20 mostly mid-sized works that were true intense perceptual experiences. I was humbled and honored to find out that I was selected as a Milton and Sally Avery Fellow. This is an annual honor given to two MacDowell residents of “outstanding ability in the area of painting”.http://www.macdowellcolony.org
2006: Thick Brush Painting Installation
This was my first large-scale painting installation and it consisted of 19 independently created on-site paintings arranged in a non-contiguous way, closely to one another so that formal relationships from one painting flowed into the next. I like to show my individually conceived paintings as large installations of closely hung, formally connected works that create a sense of compelling overwhelmingness in the viewer....an experience that more closely parallels that of actually being in the woods; constantly focusing in and out of space over time. The dense grouping caused the viewer to not be able to see each work as an individual painting (or image/view) thus purposely undermining some of the representational solidity of the works and bringing their formal qualities (the abstract nature of painting with the materiality of the paint and the painting process) to the forefront of this perceptual experience.
All of the paintings in this show were created over my three summers of working on-site in the foothills Cascades Mountains of Washington State. Below is a pdf of a full artist's statement about the works in this show.2006MACartistSt
2006: More Mysterious Clarity(s)
Two new versions of A Mysterious Clarity were exhibited in 2006. One was Gaddis Geeslin Gallery at San Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas and the other was at the Wynwood Art Complex during the Miami Beach Art Basel week.
2005: Florida Focus-Northern Tropics
Florida Focus: Northern Tropics was the forth installment at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Clearwater of this exhibition series which was designed to survey some of the most exciting work currently produced in various parts of Florida. Rena Blades, who was then CEO of the Palm Beach County Cultural Commission and previously had been Director of the Brogan Museum in Tallahassee, curated this version with the support of Ken Rollins, the Executive Director of the museum.The 11 other artists included in this exhibition were: George Blakely, Linda Hall, Alexa Kleinbard, Cate Wyatt Magalian, Mark Messersmith, Donna O'Neal, Kris Rybka, O.L. Samuels, Duncan Stewart, Paul Tamanian, and Jim Roche.
2005: New American Paintings #58
I was included in New American Paintings #58 (Southern Zone) which was juried by Beth Venn, an independent curator from New York. My works appeared on pages 58-61 and below is the artist statement I included in that edition.
2005: Cintas Foundation Visual Arts and Film Finalist Exhibition in NYC
Since 1963, the CINTAS Foundation, Inc. has awarded fellowships annually to creative artists of Cuban lineage residing outside of Cuba. The biennial competition and exhibition was held this year at the Americas Society Gallery in NYC was titled CINTAS: Foundation Visual Arts and Film Awards. It showcased the works of Christian Curiel and Amalia Zarranz (who received the fellowship from the Cintas Foundation for their works in visual arts and film, respectively) and award finalists Felipe Dulzaides, Lilian Garcia-Roig, and Neraldo de la Paz (Guerra de la Paz) for visual arts and Orlando Rojas for filmmaking.Three of my recent on-site painting groupings of the dense green Washington woods paintings were chosen for exhibition.The jury was comprised of Gabriela Rangel of Americas Society, Julian Zugazagoitia of El Museo del Barrio, Sandra Antelo Suárez of TRANS Magazine, and David Kiehl of the Whitney Museum.
2005: Mysterious Clarity(s)
New and different versions of the original A Mysterious Clarity exhibition went to the Alexander Brest Museum in Jacksonville University, the Art Center Galleries at Okalaoosa-Walton College in Niceville, FL and the Art Galleries at Valdosta State University in GA. Several large WA 60" x 144" on-site paintings were included in the shows.
2004: National Museum of Women in the Arts Exhibition
2004 was an important year for me as far as creating and exhibiting larger-scale Florida-based works and being acknowledged as a significant Florida artist. An example and highlight of this was being included in the exhibition Transitory Patters: Florida Women Artists that opened at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. in 2004 and then traveled to several museums across the state of Florida including the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art. Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz was the guest curator for the exhibition and she also contributed an essay for the catalog titled: Calm and Cacophony.Jurors/curators for the exhibition were Bonnie Clearwater, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; Lori Mertes, curator at the Miami Art Museum; Margaret Miller, director of the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum; Rena Minar, former director of the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science; and Sue Scott, adjunct curator at the Orlando Museum of Art.Out of the over 700 submissions, the 19 artists selected to be included in the exhibition were: Teresita Fernández, Naomi Fisher, Victoria Gitman, Mernet Larson, Lynne Golob Gelfman, Francie Bishop Good, Carol Brown, Natalia Benedetti, Julie Davidow, Maria Martinez-Cañas, Beatriz Monteavaro, Dara Friedman, Suzanne McClelland, Aida Ruilova, Jennifer Morgan, Vickie Pierre, Marisa Tellería-Díez, and Wendy Wischer.Below is a link to the press release about the exhibitionTransitoryPatternsFloridaWomenArtists at NMWA
This catalog can be purchased from Amazon.com
2004: A Mysterious Clarity
A Mysterious Clarity is the title to a show that featured three FSU painters (Ray Burggraf, Mark Messersmith & me) who all use landscape as their point of departure for their distinct, yet strangely strongly related works. This show opened at 621 Gallery in Tallahassee in 2004 and was so popular and successful that it traveled to numerous other museums and galley venues in FL, GA & TX. This year 621 invited us back to have an updated decade show...what are we doing now...called A Mysterious Clarity 2.0.
2004: Sight on Site
In November of 2004 I had my fourth solo show at Valley House Gallery in Dallas, TX. This exhibit titled Sight on Site featured some of my first works from the foothills of the Cascades Mountains in western Washington, northeast of Seattle. Although I had been to Seattle several times before for short family visits, I did not realize that I could actually try to spend extended time there until the summer 2003. That year my in-laws purchased a very small cabin in the woods and when they took us up to see it, I thought that it was visually compelling that I instantly felt a deep desire, or rather NEED, to paint there even though I had no supplies or strategy to get the works back if I did manage to paint. Luckily my family is sympathetic to my artistic temperament so I was able to basically abandoned my them for the rest of the visit. I immediately drove into the city and went to Daniel Smith Art Supply store where I purchased eight 24" x 18" canvases, brushes, paints, etc. and then drove back up to the cabin where I painted non-stop until the day before our flight back to Tallahassee.That brief but wonderful time in the Cascades Mountains left me determined to figure out how I could manage to spend the entire summer painting there. Luckily I was awarded a 2004 (COFRS) summer research grant from FSU which provided the means for me to do just that. The works I created over that summer proved to be the foundation for an ever growing series of larger Washington works: works that ultimately lead to several large-scale painting installations and shows.
2004: Rouge Nations
"Rogue Nations": Cuban & Chinese Artists was an exhibition curated by Antonio Eligio Fernandez (Tonel), Anjee Helstrup and David Spalding that examined conceptual approaches and links between contemporary artists that had a global perspective on art and politics outside of their respective communist home nations. I had four of my Post-Post Cuba Diaries print works included in the exhibition. In this series I used imagery and symbols inspired by multiple conflicted relationships with Cuba as a point of departure. The prints in this exhibit were produce in the Kala Print Studios in Berkeley, CA after my 1999 trip to Havana where I was a visiting artist at the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba.The exhibition featured works by Juan Carlos Alom, Felipe Dulzaides, Kattia Garcia Fayat, Nereida Garcia-Ferraz, Lilian Garcia-Roig, Manuel Pina, Juan Carlos Quintana, Song Dong, Tang Hui, Jose Toriac, Wang Qingsong, Yang Shaobin, Yang Zhenzhong, Yin Xiuzhen, Zhan Wang and Zhou Tiehai.The exhibition was held at the Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana Gallery in San Jose, CA from, July 28-September 4, 2004Catalog with curatorial essay and biographies-Length 12 pages, published by MACLA, Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, 2004
2004: Featured Hispanic Artist for the State of Florida
In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month in September, the governor of the state of Florida selects an artist each year to exhibit artwork in the State Capital Plaza Gallery. In 2004 I was invited to be the Feature Artist during the month-long celebrations and activities. Apart from showing some of my most recent on-sight Florida landscape paintings, I decided to respond to the month's Hispanic-centric theme by also exhibiting a series works on paper that were clearly about specific Latino-themed motifs and imagery. The Translation Trance series was based on iconic, high art images from the “Old World”-Spain (Velazquez) and the “New World”-Latin America, but more specifically, by various images of Meso-American stylized figurative sculptures. Most of these Translation Trance works were produced in Austin, Texas as a visiting artist at Strike Editions and at Coronado Studio’s Serie Project.
Note that many of the Translation Trance works are reproduced and explained in the publication Reflexciones: New Directions in Mexican American Studies, Neil Foley issue editor; published by CMAS UT Press 1997, cover image and p.71-76.
Work from this series is also included in a book titled Triumph of our Communities published by Bilingual Review/Press Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University, 1995. Both can be ordered on Amazon.comIn addition, my print Translation Trance: La Infant Teotihuacana (from Serie II-1995) can be seen at serieproject.org
Super excited and honored to be in this amazing group show of Latinx artists-
Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way explores contemporary Latinx artists’ innovations and interventions within established traditions of painting, inviting discussion on a variety of themes and revealing the diversity and expansiveness present within the field. The fifty-eight artists in the exhibition—and those in the Latinx field more broadly—encourage us to interrogate the continued relevance of boundaries, from political borders to disciplinary confines. This exhibition therefore celebrates artists whose expressions are first and foremost personal and subjective, but whose heterogeneous and culturally specific interventions enrich one another and the history of American and contemporary art, two fields from which such artists have been historically excluded. Inspired by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem “[Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way],” the show celebrates abundance and presents a vision of Latinx art that is, like the diaspora itself, infinitely complex.
