Lupita's gallery

The Muse is all about my influences and inspirations as an artist.

A constant influence has been the New York City art scene with its museums and art collections. I have met there the wonderful colors of Cezanne, the painted lights of Monet, the incredible architecture of paint in Matisse, and the disturbed dimensions and brush strokes of Francis Bacon.

In school they attempted to shape my opinions on art with an art history perspective. It proposed that art like science was an evolution of western art from its ancient Lascaux cave drawings up until its most abstract and conceptual images.

But to me art is “Art” because it transmits, it transforms, and it touches you in some deep way. Otherwise it is more decorative, or even an intellectual self-pleasuring exercise.

And although it is difficult to consciously describe all the seeds that have taken root to form me, there have been many life experiences that have made their way into my work.

For me art can be found not only in paintings, but in great Flamenco, or the flow of Martial Arts as it balances physical movement, mind, and spirit, or the view from a top the dizzying heights of the Chichen Itza pyramids. Art to me is what gives our life focus and feeling, from a moment of Duende, to skiing down a fast slope, to understanding the meaning of the Gods from Joseph Campbell. These intensities and insights force me to seek my spiritual core and re-experience moments on canvass, and from all this to invent or channel a world that transcends common reality.

I would have to say that what really influences me, is what makes me feel deeply, or see and understand life more clearly. Examples such as the Duende of Flamenco Cante, Dance and Music, Martial arts, balancing physical movement, mind and spirit, and meditation. From a moment of "Duende" in flamenco, to skiing the perfect run down an impossible mountain slope, to reading a passage about "The Gods" from a Joseph Campell's book. These intensities in life make me want to reach out and investigate my spiritual nature. The expression of this is the creation of a portal into another world; a world with different rules that transcends our “common” reality.