Laguna College of Art + Design

At 8 years old, I was severely injured in a very serious car accident which resulted in a coma for a week. This was an event that changed a lot of people's lives within my family. The scene was so horrific, it was only told with metaphors to lighten up the weight of the account. My mom came up with the idea of the term, the red flower (la flor roja). She had described it vividly, using an analogy of a red flower shape from the impact on the top of my head. The last thing I remembered from the accident was looking into a mirror, seeing this mass of blood cover me completely from head to toe. Then a long sleep. I dreamed so much at one point that I began to feel as if reality was the life experienced within sleeping. In awakening, I began a journey that slowly restructured my trust and faith in people. The Red Flower my mother gave to me, an 8-year-old boy almost 9, would be my vessel in telling the story of these events. This bodily mass of red is a conductor that sparks memories. I am singing of something personal, a Visual Morna, a song about a meaningful event in my life. In the spirit of Capo Verde, I am communicating about sodade (nostalgia), cretchu (love), and morabeza (kindness). I compose a representation of an emotional experience using symbols, landscapes, poses of the figure, and color. It is surreal expressive realism. They are visual metaphors of emotional turbulence. These paintings are about my self-identity through these most difficult times. They depict surreal bilocations, two places simultaneously. Within the locations I am choosing, and within my psychological state. They are moments within my narrow existence of perceived streaming reality. In painting them, I commit what I call Acts of Liberation/Love to free myself. A liberation of my very being in order to change something that ails me within. I fulfill this by singing through art.