June 7 – September 8, 2013

Opening Reception: June 7, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Catering generously provided by Serranos
$10/Free for Members
Special performance by Daniel Adame: 8:00 – 8:10 pm

Serie Project XX

Stephanie Mercado, Untitled, 2013

In 1993, Sam Coronado founded the Serie Project, a non-profit Latino arts organization dedicated to the fine art of serigraphy. Since its inception, the Serie Project’s annual AIR (Artist in Residence) program invites artists to learn the serigraph printmaking technique and create a limited edition of prints, under the guidance of a Master Printer.

Each year, Mexic-Arte Museum hosts an exhibition of the serigraphy produced by that year’s Serie Project AIR program. The Museum is the official archive of Serie Project prints produced every year since 1993. Coronado is also one of the three co-founders of the Museum – the partnership between Mexic-Arte Museum and the Serie Project consists of two decades of strong collaboration.

This year’s selected artists are Farley Bookout, Margarita Cabrera, Paul del Bosque (not on display), Sandra C. Fernandez (not on display), Nahum Flores, Rigoberto A. Gonzalez, Salvador Lopez, Oscar Magallanes (not on display), Michael Marshall, Stephanie Mercado, Brian Phillips, Patricia Tinajero, Ernesto Yerena Montejano (not on display), and George Yepes. There will also be a selection of artists from past Serie Project residencies.

Young Latino Artists 18: Con/Juntos

Ricardo Paniagua, Unknown Sources, 2011

The Young Latino Artists (YLA) exhibition has historically provided Latino artists under the age of thirty-five with professional-level museum experience and exposure. In 1996, the inception of the Young Latino Artists Exhibition resulted in one of the most highly anticipated annual traditions for the Mexic-Arte Museum.

Now in its eighteenth year, the current YLA exhibition Con/Juntos will be guest curated by visual artist Michael Anthony Garcia; the title, which means “With/Together,” reinforces the importance of the joining of ideas and of individuals with a common cause, while also referencing the idea of conjuntos, a group of musicians collaborating and unifying their talents to create beautiful music for the public to share.

Selected artists include: Raul Gonzalez, Daniel Adame,Sergio Garcia,Ricardo Paniagua, Robert Jackson Harrington, Isabella Bur, April Garcia,Nelda Ramos,Javier Vanegas, Colectivo Sector Reforma (Javier Cárdenas Tavizon, Santino Escatel, and Alejandro Fournier), and Tejidos Urbanos.

Michael Anthony Garcia creates groupings of artists throughout Texas as well as from Mexico, Colombia and Argentina, with a wide range of experience, styles, personalities and practices. The groups were introduced to each other’s work and given time to collaborate either in person or by means of email, telephone or Skype™ to develop their ideas and finally create a brand new work to debut in the Museum. The exhibition also features artworks by the individual artists themselves to give insight into their practices and their particular contributions to the collaborative work. The diverse works presented in Con/Juntos represent a wide range of media from photography, installation, video, and performance, to collage, sculpture, yarn bombing and painting.

The post Young Latino Artists and Serie XX Exhibit at Mexic-Arte Museum appeared first on The Serie Project.

Stephanie Mercado

My work merges fashion, painting, printmaking and historical European imagery with contemporary issues concerning identity construction, displays of wealth, imperialism and the pursuit of the American Dream. Through couture dress sculptures, and fine art production I investigate how material objects become symbols of one’s success and define one’s identity. Houses become icons, and the use of pattern is symbolic for the need to adorn, embellish and personalize one’s possessions. Elements of cartography personify land and real-estate, and one’s curiosity to categorize, explore and conquer the unknown.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE

Stephanie Mercado is a Los Angeles artist. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing from California State University Long Beach in 2007. She has exhibited nationally and internationally since 2006. In 2008 she traveled to Europe and studied painting independently, inspiring her to create the current body of work that merges historical European painting with contemporary issues. Mercado’s American Dream art illustrates themes of identity construction, displays of wealth, and imperialism.

Growing up in the East Los Angeles neighborhood, Boyle Heights, Stephanie Mercado was inspired by spending time at her mother’s fabric store and her grandfather’s upholstery shop. Although she formally pursued painting in her career as a professional artist, she’s always had a love for fashion design and for screen printing (or printmaking), which is often used in fashion design. She also claims PBS-famed Bob Ross as being one of her early influences in becoming an artist.

Mercado founded and runs Paper Doll Press, located in Highland Park on the corner of Ave. 51 and Monte Vista St. in Los Angeles. Paper Doll Press is an independent creative art studio focused on publishing intaglio, relief and silkscreen editions, in addition to original paintings and couture dress sculptures.

Watch the film interview below!

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Like many artists who grew up on the Mexico-Texas border, inspiration often manifests itself in the form of vibrant appreciation for two countries. Marilu Flores Gruben is no exception. Though her formal art education has supplied her with an impressive resume, Gruben’s solo and group exhibitions provide her domestic and international experience throughout Texas and in California, Mexico, and Argentina. Much of Gruben’s work is a reflection of mystic and religious artifacts that she often finds in Mexican homes.

On several occasions, Gruben crossed the Rio Grande River to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and literally painted within homes to capture the raw essence of life across the river – a river that Gruben says does not separate, but rather, brings people together. An advocate of using various materials in her work, Gruben has most recently found fabrics to be her preferred medium. Gruben enjoys making installations mostly because of the varying ways viewers can perceive Gruben’s preferred subjects: women.

Nursing, 2006

By anticipating light that will fall on her pieces, Gruben believes a part of everyone can be glimpsed, but not quite revealed:

“I wrap and cut gauze over chiffon to make collages. They are always sheer and translucent, but just how depends on the angle at which you see them, or the light. A color that screams at you from one angle hides itself at another. Women like to conceal things, but depending on the other party involved, not always the same thing. We all have our secrets.”

Obituary below reprinted from Hillside Funeral Home – be sure to visit their web page to sign guest book or send private condolences:

Artist, teacher, wife, mother, comic poet, humane philosopher, generous collaborator, unsentimental embracer of life’s finer madnesses, and—since the age of 18—a student of what she herself called “all the different ways of seeing,” Marilu Flores Gruben passed away on March 12, 2013 in Houston, Texas.

Born in Laredo in 1944, to a family that settled the area early in the 18th Century, Marilu was the third of Sheriff Porfirio Flores’ four extraordinary daughters, though she may well have been the only daughter to regularly “borrow” The Sherriff’s official vehicle and terrorize wayward denizens of Lover’s Lane via commentary from that car’s blaring loudspeaker.

She attended St. Peter’s, graduated from Martin Senior High, and matriculated to Incarnate Word College, then an all-female institution run by nuns alternately joyous and merciless. She graduated with twin baccalaureate degrees in Studio Art and English and continued her art training at the University of Texas at Austin where she met and married William C. Gruben, a man so taken with her that – within the first month of their 48 year relationship — he swore to learn Spanish so as to ingratiate himself with her family. Such was the power of Marilu’s charm that, in less than a year, William Gruben was fluent. They were soon blessed with two children Adrienne Sigrid, a film producer, and Anna Patricia, a political ethnographer.

Upon her husband’s taking his graduate degree from Austin, the family moved to Dallas, where Marilu recommenced her own studies in art at Southern Methodist University, eventually earning a master’s degree. At that point she began to teach drawing and painting at the Arts Magnet High School in Dallas and then – for 20 years – at The Greenhill School. Marilu understood the vital necessity of arts instruction for the young and worked tirelessly to open doors for all her students.

As many layers as there are II, 2004

Amazingly, as she spent hours each day showing young people all the different ways to see, as she spent even more time nurturing and celebrating her daughters and her husband, Marilu poured endless energy into her own drawing, collage, and painting. As a result, her art flowered and matured, and Marilu Gruben began to gain national and even international attention. She exhibited in gallery and museum shows from Buenos Aires to Los Angeles, from the University of California at Irvine to Notre Dame University, and her work appeared widely in anthologies and monographs issued by commercial and university presses.

Marilu and her work were profiled by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News and the Laredo Times, she exhibited in Texas at the Dallas Museum of Art, The African-American Museum in Dallas, the Art Museum of South Texas, Austin’s Mexic-Arte Museum, as well as in various gallery shows and in the Laredo Center for the Arts. Certainly she drew inspiration from the colors, textures and images from her early life on the border, including paintings referencing the jail where Sheriff Flores presided, collages and ready-mades constructed from swatches of her mothers’ ball gowns, as well as haunting images emanating from the once-submerged-now-reemerging town of Guerrero Viejo, ancestral home of her grandfather.

Yet she also opened herself to the world’s other fine madnesses and executed bold canvasses based on her travels to Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Santiago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas (from which she created a whole collage series on Las Vegas Dancers) and even the grey-blue skies of Eugene, Oregon where daughter Anna was a professor. In 2008, she moved back to Laredo with her husband and began a series of paintings and collages based on the shifting landscapes and growing tensions of the Rio Grande.

She is preceded in death by her parents, Porfirio L. and Esperanza Flores and Father-in-Law, William Charles Gruben II.

She is survived by her loving husband, William Charles Gruben, her daughters Adrienne Goldstein and Anna Olivier, her sons-in law Dave Goldstein and Charles Olivier; her sisters and their husbands, Rosario and Julio† Garcia, Gloria and William J. Dickinson, and Silvia and Jeffrey Jones; mother-in-law Virginia Anderson Gruben, siblings-in-law Roger Gruben, and Patricia and Martin Gotfrit. She is also survived by numerous cousins, nieces, nephews and other relatives, as well as a host of former students and devoted friends.

The post In Memory of Marilu Flores Gruben: 1944-2013 appeared first on The Serie Project.

Lone Star College in Kingwood, Texas – through June 17, 2013

Opening receptions on May 31, 6:00 – 8:00 pm and June 5, 12:30 – 2:30 pm

This Houston printmaking exhibition features prints, paintings, books and assemblage by print artists Dean Dass, University of Virginia, Lari Gibbons, University of North Texas and Sandra C. Fernandez, University of Texas, Austin. Sandra Fernandez participated in The Serie Project’s 12th and 15th annual Artist in Residence Programs, and she will be printing again this year as part of the 2013 program (Serie XX).

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Dean Dass
Dean Dass teaches printmaking in the Department of Art. After receiving a B.A. from the University of Northern Iowa, he went on to study at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia where he earned his MFA in 1980. With numerous solo and group exhibitions to his credit, Mr. Dass has shown his work throughout the U.S. and most recently in Finland. Visit Dean Dass’ university faculty page for more information.

Lari Gibbons
Lari Gibbons is an associate professor at the University of North Texas, where she teaches printmaking and directs the Print Research Institute of North Texas (PRINT Press). She earned an MFA from the University of Nebraska and a BA from Grinnell College (Grinnell, Iowa). Lari currently serves as editor of The Mid America Print Council Journal. Visit Lari Gibbons’ official website to learn more.

Sandra C. Fernandez
Sandra Fernandez was born in Queens, New York, but she grew up in Quito, Ecuador. She completed her B.S., M.A., and M.F.A. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Fernandez participated in Serie XII, creating the print titled Enjaulada, and in Serie XV, creating the print titled Coming of Age (Transformations). She currently lives with her son and daughter in Austin where she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas. Visit Sandra C. Fernandez’ official website to learn more.

The post Sandra C. Fernandez Featured in Houston Area Printmaking Exhibition appeared first on The Serie Project.

White living room with pastel accents – from Decoist.com

Obviously, we cannot own the most famous fine art pieces such as The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, Water Lilies by Claude Monet, The Flower Seller by Diego Rivera, The Scream by Edvard Munch, Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, or any piece by Leonardo, Rembrandt, or Picasso – but you can always purchase the cheap poster reproductions. Then again, how original is that? Or you can go to Target or Hobby Lobby and buy some “abstract art” that is only fit for your doctor’s waiting room or in the living room of a relative who still thinks mauve and gray are the “in” colors.

At the Serie Project, we offer a range of original, affordable fine art prints – produced with the serigraphy (also known as screen printing) technique in limited edition quantities – by emerging and established artists who come from a variety of backgrounds as painters, illustrators, sculptors, and graphic artists, representing a diversity of ethnicities and cultures.

But even more importantly, we’re keeping up with the trends in interior design because we know your house isn’t a gallery with only four walls and a ceiling! If you’re keeping up with the trends, too, you’ll want your artwork to coordinate your furniture, decor, and wall colors.

Touches of pastels in an all white room – from Decoist.com

“The palette is shifting from super-saturated and strong hues to softer, lighter pastel shades,” explained Sonu Mathew, ASID, IIDA and Benjamin Moore’s senior interior designer. (Click here to read the full article on the Benjamin Moore website.)

“And as the world seems to be gradually turning the corner on recessionary times, this whispery tint of the color is timely and evocative of the uptick. As for the move to pastels,” she continued, “they convey innocence and typically have a calming influence.”

In a recent article about how to to decorate with a pastel color palette, Decoist blog says, “Whether you offset gentle shades with crisp white, combine them with more vivid colors, go subtle with a touch of pastel style, or saturate your space with these irresistible hues, you’re sure to have a winning interior!” (Click here to see photos and get ideas for your own home.)

To view all the prints in our catalog, simply click on “Print Shop” in the menu at the top. There are multiple ways to search the inventory. You can sort alphabetically, or by price, or you can view by series (I through our current year’s series, which is XX). If it doesn’t have the blue “ADD TO CART” button, sadly, it means it’s not for sale. But we have plenty of pieces that are for sale, and most of them are in the $250-$300 range, making it extremely affordable to own unique, fine art serigraphy.

On our Pinterest page, we have organized our pieces by themes: Flora & Fauna, Abstract, Women, Pop Culture, and more. Below are several of our fine art screen print picks that we think would go well with almost any modern or traditional pastel color interior design:

Click on the links to purchase the pieces:

1. Target (Suture), 2012, Jessica Halonen
2. Untitled, 2011, Joey Fauerso
3. Señorita Juice, 2012, by Paloma Mayorga
4. Porque Te Vas?, 2012, Carlos Donjuan
5. Bones, 2012, Adriana Corral
6. Breathing, 2004, Tamiko Kawata
7. September 15 – El Grito, 2007, Sandria Hu
8. Dois mil e dose linhas e pontos, 2011, Rosane Volchan O’Conor
9. As many layers as there are II, 2004, Marilu Flores Gruben
10. Veiled Figure, 2004, Sharon Wilcutts

The post Fine Art Prints for a Pastel Color Interior Design appeared first on The Serie Project.

Farley Bookout at Serie Project
(photo by Scott David Gordon)

Drawing from her first love of war propaganda illustration and Victorian history, Farley Bookout is driven to create imagery of pensive women in lonely spaces, reminiscent of a vintage screen print. Bookout began drawing at the age of 12, inspired by the horses she owned and the desire to capture their weight and beauty. Finding she had a knack for it, she took classes in high school and the nearby Rhode Island School of Design. Her father also owned many art books with Civil War paintings, WWI propaganda posters, WPA posters, and plates of large Leyendecker and Rockwell images.

“I lived in an old, dusty Victorian that had once been a girls’ school, and I was convinced that it was haunted,” says Bookout. “I found old school books in the hidden cabinets in our living room, which had once been the school’s library. I believe all of these things affected me profoundly in the way I see the past.”

What Bookout strives to do with her work currently is to equate the past with the present/future of the human condition, particularly that of women, and how their roles might have changed in the last hundred years.

Click here to purchase Farley Bookout’s print

“There is still a resounding perplexity about exactly where a woman fits into her societal or familial role,” explains Bookout. “I have felt drawn lately to Chinese history and women, and their changing roles, as my daughter grows up, and I try to preserve her heritage.” (Bookout’s daughter is adopted from Taiwan.)

Bookout majored in photography at the University of Texas at Austin. She would spend countless hours in the dark room, “building a story through fuzzy glasses.” She would use pantyhose, bleach, vaseline, and overlays to soften her subject.

“Now as an illustrator and printer, I have found a way to keep that same softness by keeping the sketch lines and lead pencil hand smudges and eraser marks and even margin notes,” says Bookout. She feels that if her images are too clean, there is little space for the viewer to enter and discover her work for themselves.

“I want them to find their own story,” says Bookout, “a story that they want in their own lives.”

Bookout and her husband own and run an illustration, design, and screenprinting business in the heart of Texas, specializing in gig posters, called Empire Press.

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Margarita Cabrera’s residency at the Serie Project

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th century Mexican nun, celebrated playwright, mathematician, and poet during the Baroque period, when women were restricted from education. In 1667, this self-taught scholar enterd a convent, the only place she was allowed to educate herself. Although some of her work was burned during the 17th century, it is now looked upon as a defense for women’s right to education.

The tribute at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center to Sor Juana included a film screening on April 12 of Yo, La Peor de Todas (I, The Worst of All). The following evening there was a panel discussion – “Sor Juana’s Legacy: Paving the Way for Feminine Creativity” – moderated by Kelly Grajeda, with an introduction by Dr. Gregory F. Pappas, Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University and a leading Sor Juana Scholar. Artists Paloma Mayorga and Margarita Cabrera also participated in the discussion.

The exhibit, featuring Paloma Mayorga (from Serie XIX) and Margarita Cabrera (from Serie XX), will run through June 29.

Paloma Mayorga’s residency at the Serie Project

Main Gallery – Margarita Cabrera: Brought Us With Me

Margarita Cabrera’s work centers on socialpolitical issues within communities addressing different aspects of immigration, violence and the economic relationship between the United States and Mexico. Learn more about Cabrera on her official website. Her Serie Project print, which she produced during the 2013 residency program, is part of the exhibit and will soon be available for sale on our website.

Community Gallery – Paloma Mayorga: Organic Tendencies 

“My work is a means of understanding the thoughts that occupy my head. I have a deep fascination with bones and bodies and the contours which make up their beauty.” Read more about Mayorga in our Serie Project Artist in Residence Spotlight. Her print, Señorita Juice, which she produced during the 2012 residency program, is part of the exhibit and is available for sale on our website.

The post Sor Juana Exhibit at MACC Featuring Two Serie Project Artists appeared first on The Serie Project.

What Time Is It There?
J. Salvador Lopez
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Born in Long Beach, California, J. Salvador Lopez has lived in Texas since the age of eight, residing between Dallas and San Antonio. Lopez studied at San Antonio Arts Institute and Mountain View Community College. An active exhibitor, of his work he says he wishes to express his ideas and beliefs by creating a bridge between human trials and exploration of the spirit. He sees it as the glorification of what life can give to us and the tragedy of what it can take away.

“I’m a self-taught painter, but I’ve had formal training,” says Lopez. “My growth has been difficult since I have been constructing themes which are very personal and original.”

Lopez has been influenced by a variety of art movements, including Romantic, Mannerist, Surrealist, Dada, Gothic, Pre-Columbian, Post-Impressionist, Renaissance, Post-Modern, as well as diverse cultures such as Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Native American, Russian, African, and the art and culture that emerged from the Mexican Revolution.

Lopez works in a variety of mediums: watercolor, pen & ink, pencil, pastel, gouache, oils, acrylic, tempra, and airbrush. He identifies primarily with his drawing, although he is well regarded for his talent as a painter.

In describing the piece he recently created for the Serie Project, Lopez says, “My work has an ongoing theme: relationships between Man, Woman, and God and how they react to one another. I use an onset image to interpret and symbolize the larger image and vice-versa.”

Watch the video interviews!

Part I

Part II

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Photo Credit: Jojo Marion

SXSW is upon us – and film and music is in the air! One of the mainstays of the festival is Flatstock, and we’ll be there selling our prints. Co-presented by the American Poster Institute (API) and SXSW, Flatstock 38 will display the works of the world’s top gig poster artists. The show runs March 14-16 and will feature posters of varying styles, colors and techniques for sale by the very artists who created them. (You’ll even be able to hear acoustic sets by a variety of SXSW-curated bands while you peruse!) The best part about it…no badge required. It’s free and open to the public!

The Flatstock shows provide the American Poster Institute with a way to present poster artists collectively while showcasing the breadth of styles they represent. The best concert posters have always captured both the essence of the music they promoted and the spirit of the time in which they were produced. Flatstock provides an ongoing series of opportunities to see fine poster art in person and to meet the artists who created it.

But if you’d rather avoid the traffic and crowds, we’ve picked a few for you to go with the spirit of SXSW. Consider purchasing a print this week – it’s a great way to own a piece of original fine art, support the Serie Project’s Artist in Residence Program, and help maintain the artistic spirit that keeps Austin’s character year-round!

If you Google “Texas film,” this actor may not come up in the search results, but he should, as he is the epitome of the cowboy in Western films, many of them set in the wild west of Texas. John Wayne starred in 142 pictures (in 1999, the American Film Institute named Wayne 13th among the Greatest Male Screen Legends of All Time). Now he stars in this screen print by Emmanuel Montoya, titled “N’de.” We also spot Davy Crockett in the background, another legend of the wild west. Who else do you recognize?

N’de, 2010 – PURCHASE THIS PRINT
Emmanuel Montoya
Screen Print, Edition of 50

There is country, bluegrass, folk, and then there is TEXAS music. Willie Nelson is definitely considered one of the godfathers of music in the Lone Star State. To make this claim official, Nelson is the honorary chairman of the Advisory Board of the Texas Music Project, and the official music charity of the state of Texas.

Artist Robert Hurst born in Houston, Texas, now claims Austin as his adopted hometown. Well known for his portraiture of musicians and sports figures, Hurst has created a print of Willie Nelson in honor of his seventieth birthday. Hurst’s association with the Texas musical living legend goes back to his early days in Austin when he would volunteer for Farm Aid.

Willie 03, 2003 – PURCHASE THIS PRINT
Robert Hurst
Screen Print, Edition of 50

The Jetsons. A family of the future living in the year 2062 in a futuristic utopia of elaborate robotic contraptions, aliens, holograms, and whimsical inventions. Wait! That sounds like SXSW Interactive! The word “innovation” was reported to have been used 650,o00 times so far. (Okay, okay, according to The Onion, anyway.)

“Los Supersonicos” as they are called in Spanish, represent a future in which humans will get along with one another regardless of language or cultural identity. Indeed, just as all cartoons are dubbed to fit the language in the country they are aired in, George Jetson speaks to the audience in Spanish while he his wife marvels at the perfection of their world in English. Hey, that does kind of sound like SXSW, with people from all over the world gathering to see the same bands and films…

A Fairy Tale, 2007 – PURCHASE THIS PRINT
Carlos Fresquez
Screen Print, Edition of 50

SXSW is all about film, music, and interactive media…and drinking. And because it’s so much fun, and sometimes too much fun, it means you might wake up the next day feeling a little hungover. Or “crudo” as they say in Spanish. You could opt for the ever-Austin breakfast taco (bacon and egg? migas?). But if you want to do it right, you’ll have a bowl of menudo. It’s supposed to be the miraculous cure for any hangover!

For those of you who have never been initiated, Menudo is a traditional Mexican soup made with beef stomach in a clear broth or with a red chili base. Usually, lime, chopped onions, and chopped cilantro are added, as well as crushed oregano and crushed red chili peppers. It’s the breakfast of champions.

Menudo: Breakfast of Champions, 2010 – PURCHASE THIS PRINT
Maria Natividad
Screen Print, Edition of 50

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Over the past five years, I have been making ink drawings in small sketchbooks in a daily-like manner. In these drawings, I work quickly from one to the next, spontaneously filling sketchbooks with minute line depictions that are simple and naive by nature, but evoke issues from a subconscious level.

Photo by Scott David Gordon

For the Serie Project, I chose drawings from some of these sketchbooks to work out my composition. I picked them randomly, and I made sure that they correspond to each other. This, I believe, reflects the way in which I work. I love to work in this fashion. It’s like a mirror reflecting images of memory, which surface as a poetic language of drawing.

The characters that emerge are sometimes funny and other times somber, showing both a dark and a soft side of humanity. They reference my personal history and experiences growing up in Honduras and immigrating to Canada.

In Honduras, I was affected by the social upheaval and the unjust wars of the Central American region. My response to these issues from the past and present appear in the drawings as bleak, ironic, satirical, peculiar, and child-like, as I strive to find sense in life.

—Nahúm Flores

Whims of Convention
Nahum Flores
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Reprinted from Nahum Flores’ official website:

Nahúm Flores was born in 1974 in Danlí, Honduras and immigrated to Canada at age 17, after living in Mexico and the US. He studied Drawing and Painting at the Ontario College of Art & Design. In 2006, his work was selected among five other artists for the Biennale of Visual Art of Honduras. In conjunction, he participated in the Biennale of the Central America Isthmus in El Salvador. Nahúm has also exhibited his work at the National Gallery of Fine Art in Tegucigalpa. In 2007, he and his collaborators, Z’otz* Collective, participated in a multidisciplinary art residency in Trsic, Serbia.

Nahúm Flores’ works are executed randomly and intuitively by applying multiple layers of water based and organic materials, such as acrylic paint, gel medium, acrylic polymer, sand, ink, transfers and pencil. The drawings on the surface are a result of an alchemy of colours, rich textures and forms, which lure the mind with ideas and questions.

The fusion of the drawings and the material seduces the artist and guides his imagination to create expressive characters and amorphous forms. These characters show us both the beautiful and horrible aspects of nature, the dark and soft side of humans, through their gestures and actions, and through the situations they evoke. The barren landscapes from which the characters emerge reflect Flores personal history and experiences growing up in Honduras. There, he was affected by the social upheaval and the unjust wars of the Central American region. Flores’ childhood experiences have deeply affected his outlook and as a response, are reflected in his work.

As a source of inspiration, he uses photographs taken with great passion, in travels in Canada, Central America, Mexico and Europe. The photographs of old walls, tree bark, stones, and rusted materials are sometimes transferred onto the surface of his paintings to capture a sense of time and spatial depth.

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