I just launched a Kickstarter project to raise the necessary funds to develop a new series of paintings on the subjectivity of reality. I am very interested in exploring how cultural schemas (the way in which we organize information) affect the ways in which we perceive and interpret reality. How we use language to pack complex emotions into specific labels or phrases, and in that way make sense of our experience, gives us a unique experience of the world that is specific to the culture in which we move.

To give you some background, in the summer of 2010 I moved from my native Puerto Rico to Colorado looking for a change of air, I definitely got it. A year later due to a brain AVM I started having seizures on a daily basis. As a result of the constant seizures, my perceptual capacity was totally altered for a while: faces looked melted, the space felt like it was constantly moving, etc. My internal chaos was causing challenges to what I thought the world should look like, and living in another language was causing challenges to how I thought the world should be. This perceptual shift made me wonder about the solidity of reality.

Driven by that question, I started researching cultural schemas and discovered the immense power that culture has over how we assign meanings and qualities to objects and behaviors. If culture shapes the way in which we interpret the world- then what is reality? Through this series, I plan to explore dysfunctional schemas that have gained mainstream acceptance, specifically in the American culture that I am living in. I will not attempt to use this format to pass judgments but instead to open the conversation and make a space to question why we believe the things we believe. For the past months I have gathered tons of reference materials, sketches and have been editing my ideas to be concise and straightforward.

I am ready to put them on to the canvas!

I am asking for your support in order to buy the materials necessary to make this idea possible. The series will consist in 15 paintings, in varying sizes (from 14×14 in to 4’ x 4’). The money will strictly go to acquire the essential materials needed to make it happen (brushes, paint, canvas, etc). The actual amount estimated for what I am going to be needing is around $1,500, but in order to secure some financial aid I calculated a base for starting the project of $700.

This project will allow me to keep growing as an artist, both conceptually and in technique, after all that is the biggest reward possible. Also, through this series I will develop a body of work that I will use as part of my portfolio as a graduate student applicant next Spring.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/427460772/birthing-schema-a-painting-series-about-culture-an