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
2025: Studio in the Catskills Woods
By the end of 2025, my new studio in the Catskill mountain woods of upstate NY finally got a solid foundation…..and even a few walls! It is very exciting to finally be seeing this over 30-year dream/goal of mine being realized……and I want to thank everyone (and there are many) who have helped in various capacities in getting me to this point.
This studio- its location and 16’ wall- are of particular importance to me. The location (about 2 hours north pop NYC) places me within shot of the city so I will be able to more regularly meet-up with some of the many great artists living there & get to experience more of the shows in both NYC and the greater upstate area- The greater Upstate region is itself a wonderfully rich outpost full of so many creatives and great organizations supporting important causes- I have already meet many interesting & inspiring individuals that I call my friends and can’t wait to see them again each summer/fall- Another important feature about this place is that it has many of the qualities found in the NE that I am drawn to but have never been able to experience (beyond temporary artist residency opportunities): changing seasons complete with intense fall foliage; mountain slopes (and the varied angles/perspective they provide); rocks (which I have always been obsessed with); and having land I can freely roam…. discovering the ever-changing nuances it reveals over time, year after year……..
The big wall is important because I do not have access to anything over 10’ high in Tallahassee anymore and because of that, I have not been able to make more of my larger-scale conglomerate paintings- Although I primarily work on-site, I do have to bring the work home at some point and my Tallahassee studio is chalk-full of years worth of works- new and older works that I have held onto for various reason…..mostly because I think they stilled to find their proper home- So my Florida studio serves primarily as a “finishing touches” & storage space than anything else- As you can see, my upstate garage is already over flowing with work made at Surf Point, so the Kerhonkson studio will enable me have additional storage in NY and also serve as a fresh & inspiring creative space (much like what experience when I go to residencies) . The big open new studio space will also provide an opportunity for me to have proper studio visits as well as to organize some shows with other artists in the in the near future-
I have set up an instagram account “CatskillStudioInTheWoods” where I will be posting events related to the space once it is up & running…..hopefully by mid-summer 2026.
2025: “Comma: Infinity in a Box”
Comma: Infinity In A Box is an exhibition at Vanderbilt University’s Space 204 Gallery. Artist team, Judy Rushin-Knopf and Carolyn Henne started the Comma as an ongoing artist book project that presented opportunities for Rushin-Knopf and Henne to collaborate with 14 other artists. Rushin-Knopf’s and Henne’s common interest in the language of materials has driven Comma for a decade. They began working together as faculty colleagues at Florida State University in 2015, inviting small teams of artists to collaborate on editioned collections of objects designed to be handled and used to spark curiosity and conversation.
I was very happy to be part of Volume 1: Ghost Objects. My contribution was titled Genus Roigia (2017) and it was one of first works to address the link between my work as a painter and the scientific research of my great-great uncle, the Cuban botanist, Juan Tomás Roig. Each piece is unique; made from one of my deconstructed paintings, my old paintbrushes, recycled leather shoes, and a 3D printed “Double Roig”, an object based on a commemorative medal that has Juan Tomas Roig’s profile and is given by the Cuban government to people who achieve scientific excellence in their field. I had my head 3D scanned and added to the back of 3D printed object- bidging the two Roigs through time, space and technology.
2025: Art Fairs Galore
This year I had works featured in numerous fairs across the country including
EXPO Chicago, Art Palm Beach & Art Miami with Cernuda Arte
and at the Dallas Art fair with Valley House Gallery-
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.
