1995-97

For the past thirteen years, my work has dealt the issue of reclaiming my
Cuban culture. Before that time, I willingly acclimated myself into the
American culture. As I grew older, I started to feel as if something was
missing in my life and in my work. I wanted to investigate why I still
didn’t feel completely connected to my environment. As a way of evaluating
what was and had been important to me, I started to create images of my most
treasured memories. I realized that those memories dealt with my family,
cultural religious icons and growing up in a small coal-mining town in
western Pennsylvania. Since that point, I have concentrated my efforts on
learning more about a culture that I had separated myself from and a about
country that I had no memory of. My work has tried to find connections
between the spiritualness of the past and the spiritualness that I often
find in mundane everyday scenes. I now feel more connected to the past and
the present seems to possess a new sense of importance.

 This particular series, the Appropriated Memories Series, tries to capture
the fulfillment and spiritualness found in researching, finding and painting
images of what are for me a lost time. These images are an abstracted past.
These images have become my memory. These are nostalgic interpretations of a
country without politics or individuals; the untainted aesthetic of a
country that I can not remember and probably never really existed. When I
paint this landscape, it is as though I am walking on the island. I also
feel connected to the Cuban artists who have also painted some of these
scenes.

Series contains 16 paintings.