I use oil sticks to stay away from realism. They are large 1/2 or 1.5 inches wide x 6 inches long. Drawing with these sticks keeps me from realism and forces me to use color texture and drawn form to find somethng about the us with color, textura, line position. By not being able to do detail I am forced to express other ideas about the human condition.

David Ortiz, a native Californian, and youngest of 5 children, was raised in Mexicali Baja California, Mexico. He entered San Diego City College, before studying traditional painting at Middlesex University (New Jersey). He returned to San Diego to continue his arts studies at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM), where he started a Japanese language curriculum, immersing himself in Japanese culture, specifically Sumi-e painting and Japanese cinema (1949-1987), and spent a semester at kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata City, Japan. Upon returning to the United States he continued to explore the artistic media such as video arts, painting and Internet based arts. His video work focuses on incorporating traditional visual techniques with novel approaches to still photography. In painting he is explores surrealism, using Japanese painting techniques with modern acrylic media, incorporating both with his interest in his Mexican cultural heritage.

It is my intention to be as spontaneous as possible in my painting.  As an abstract painter I rely on strong impulsive action and response to "create" my imagery on a canvas. 

Much of what I discover on the canvas I have recalled to be observed in reality – in nature or art – and long forgotten.  The appearance and combining of these snippets is spontaneous.  I am enthralled and my work sustained by the depth and breadth of unconscious information at hand.

 This makes my work loosely improvisational, strong in color, gesture and brush mark.  It is direct and unpredictable in execution.

 I work on a series of paintings to see how variations play out.  Often I will work on three or more paintings simultaneously.

 A strong, clear color will come to mind.   Mixing the pigment and choosing the size of brush I’ll make a broad calligraphic mark on the canvas.  In response to that mark, the color, size and placement of the next stroke will occur to me.   After every brush mark I wait for the awareness of the next step, while contemplating what is already there. 

 The brush strokes and color move the eye over the canvas in a pattern, a choreography, if you will.  My eyes move with the direction of the mark or marks, and very much like in a dance I feel where the next step, the next mark should be.  Insight can be rapid and exciting, or require patience.  Working on a painting steadily will exhaust the call and response mechanism, while I understand there is more to come.  I can refresh this mechanism by focusing on another painting.  

 I will work on a painting until information no longer comes, the movement rests, the painting completed.  There may be feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction, or in the best work, a sense of unease in the balance, when culmination comes through the feeling of anticipation. 

Mirena is a visual artist based in New York city.

I make multi layered collages from bits of paper, photographs and drawings that I saved over the years. In the process of framing or joining these fragments, I construct metaphorical windows and doors that access a very personal metaphysical world. Limiting myself to paper, paint and pencil, I build up delicate burnished surfaces in my collages. Some of my recent influences have included the New Mexico landscape and "Colchas," traditional textiles made from stitched together fabric remnants. The history of "Colchas" can be traced from New Mexico to Turkey and Sephardic Spain. My work transforms the physical detritus of my life and travels into a meditative objects. Each scrap of paper is organically imbedded with grit and memory, and each collage conveys the aura of living, just as my body has absorbed and codified so many experiences.