Bezazian Branch hosts a Hispanic Heritage Month art exhibit featuring the work of local artist Raul Ortiz.
Paintings from Ortiz's exhibit Untitled Landscapes will be on display from September 3 through October 31.
Artist Statement
The landscape, for the past several years, has been the catalyst for my paintings.
As a process painter, my goal is to create poetically contemporary landscapes that capture an array of subtle overlapping shapes, textures, light, scale and heightened color relationships that are derived from the tradition of abstraction. This exploration begins with photographing nature on walks during travels and around town. In the studio, photocopies of photographs are transferred to the canvas, collaged in layers by acrylic paint. Then I rework the organic forms and representational images by juxtaposing many layers of expressive brushstrokes, adding/removing patches of flat spaces for contemplation, building up light on a water’s surface and randomly framing areas by the use of a silhouetted image, e.g. a tree or flora, to compose a unique space. I am also interested in shifting the composition by dividing the picture plane.
Influences for my work come from memories of my hometown in Mexico, Japanese prints, art nouveau, Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keefe, Gerhard Richter and Robert Kushner, just to name a few, as well as the music of Impressionists Ravel, Faure and Debussy, and from daily experiences.
My current work is a series of paintings that reinterpret/reframe and update the landscape with a contrasting contemporary twist.
Hispanic Heritage Month Art Exhibits
See the list of artists exhibiting at CPL during Hispanic Heritage Month.
