Carlos Gomez Montoya

Artist Statement

As ambitious and inflated as it may sound, I want to leave my mark on this earth. Being forgotten is perhaps one of our biggest fears, I know it is my biggest fear and that's why I do what I do; because I intend to leave a trace of me, of what I think and feel and I want people to know these feelings as well. I don't create to be understood,I can barely understand my own feelings and fears; I do create to express what I don't understand and can't feel whether because I choose to or because I am unable to.
My work is a constant self examination of how the world affects me and how I affect the world in one way or another. Some people find comfort in the storm far away in the horizon, I find comfort when I portray the storm within me. My work is deeply personal and reflects the constant roaring of emotions, desires, frustrations and fears and I know I am not the only one that feels this way, therefore my work will find echo in the memory of others as well.

Biography

Born in 1977 in Medellin, Colombia, moved to the United States in 1999. Studied under the mentorship of the Venezuelan artist Carlos I. Sanchez Vegas from 1999-2002 in Seattle.
Studied at the Centro Morelense de Las Artes in Cuernavaca, Mexico and at The Cornish College of the Arts. Influenced by painters like Mercedes Pardo, Fernando Botero, Deborah Arango, Cy Twombly, Richard Serra & George Baselitz among others, his work reflects his intense personal fight between religion and life, sexual identity and self acceptance, immigration and belonging. His use of color and the "muddiness" of his combinations reflect his constant search between what is accepted and what can be accepted not only in art but in life in general since for him beauty and harmony are always present in everything whether things appear beautiful and harmonious or not. His sensitive intimacy often times crosses the path of the spiritual and the pictorial violence of his textured works reflects his self-created beliefs and feelings through a symbolic narrative as a language always cemented on a past based in a constant achromatic contrast.

Exhibition History (CV)