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I am an artist who creates surreal artwork based on my experiences in life. Art has always been my passion since I was a toddler. Colors were what pulled me into the world of art as I had a crazy obsession with crayons as a child. In my art I try to express my feelings and experiences through symbolic meaning. I feel like showing how I feel in my art is what helps me come out of my shell without using words, but with visual images. I hope to go further in my art career and share my feelings to the world.

My work selected for this show, Extraterrester, is a reflection of how I’ve felt over the years as a young child when it came to my cultural identity. As a child, I never felt like I belonged in my ethnicity based on how I look. Growing up I was insecure about my appearance because I was told that I don’t look “Mexican”. To everyone else I looked paler than the rest of my family and that I looked more Asian than Hispanic. It also didn’t help that I had a hard time communicating with my family members in Mexico since speaking Spanish was very difficult for me. They would also make fun of me for messing up on speaking Spanish, and I would feel too embarrassed to speak so I would stay quiet. The last time I visited Mexico, I locked myself in the bedroom for half the trip so I wouldn’t have to speak to my family members (besides my grandma) so I wouldn’t be made fun of. I never felt like I belonged there and I felt too “American” to be by my family. I felt like an alien to my family with my pale skin and Asian-like features. There were many times as a child that I would purposely stay in the sun for too long just so I could have a tan, and look like I was part of my family. In the art piece, I made myself an alien to show how I felt foreign and out of place in my family. I also had myself try to paint my skin in a tan color to try to “fit in”. The painting shows that on the inside of my DNA I may be Hispanic, but on the outside, I act and look more American to everybody who sees me. I use the colors of the American flag throughout the painting to show no matter how hard I try to appear in my culture, I will always be seen as American.