Having for years filled margins of documents, and endless pages of notebooks with my specific curled doodles, I had an epiphany one day in 2022 about what I had been drawing. I thought I was drawing an infinity sign that didn't connect; instead, I understood that I had beendrawing the duality of my daily life: my own energetic track of being Salvadorean and American, from my Maya roots and forging into the future with science and AI. "From Here and From There" is my positive version of the well-used spanish adage that translates into “I’m not from here or from there". I embrace my dualities, and make visual what I have tried to exemplify with my actions, which is to be proud and learn from our Latino culture, and honor the soil and culture of this country that gives us our freedom. For this series I was intentional in it being relatable, accessible, and democratic, so it could connect with all people. I did so by choosing the material to be the humble raw muslin that is used as kitchen towels and
sheets in my culture.The proportion is that of a window of modest housing of the rest of the world, and the feel is that of a privacy cover/curtain, hanging and forming hollow curves as if the breeze behind it billows it into its shape, making it into 2-1/2D work. The vocabulary is abstract, the duality tracks are painterly and raw, the symbols of my culture are layered, ending in a translucent modern glyph shape with a window that allows me to express the now. I incorporated tree branches in red, inspired by the trees in Diego Rivera’s famous mural “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park”, as a nod to my connection to him through my art tutor, and to his art that elevated the working people of Mexico. I also explored this series in 48x48 paintings including indigo pigment and gray pigment I made from the Texas ashes from an extreme climate event. This series centers my Global Hues palette. "From Here and From There" has been exhibited at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 2022, and at Galerie Roanne-de-Saint-Laurent, Paris in 2023. One of these paintings is in the permanent collection of the El Salvador Embassy in Paris, France