DEMI

“Girl with Laika” is a painting describing a completely nude girl accompanied by a dog called Laika. Far beyond on the sky you see the planet Earth, suggesting that the girl and the dog are on a different planet. It might be the moon or some other planet. The painting makes reference to an event that happened in November 3, 1957, where a dog named Laika was sent in orbit on Sputnick II. Here, the artist uses the event to indicate her desire of “stopping the world and get out.”

“Searching For The Light” is a painting of girls fighting to find the light, which emanates from a lamp resembling an eye. The light is symbolic of several words, like Truth, Answers, etc.

Their elaborated and heavy textured dresses and multiple layers of transparencies, are like an “armature” to protect them. Everything is painted and done in a poetic way, always preserving the mysteries that it all implies. Balletic movement brings the theme of the search to a more explicit statement, where the dancer in red in the foreground looks up at the black light in the center as the positive defiance of the negative.

In “Tabula Rasa” the theme of light in the midst of darkness is explored as the central shining figure glows in the foreground surrounded by light-bringing doves. The swooping forms of the doves create a vortex around the central figure of the child who looks at the spectator without fear because the darkness cannot overcome the figures of light. “Tabula Rasa,” means the clean table or new beginning, and in this painting, it seems clear that when the doves settle and the darkness goes, a new and transformed world will take the place of the brooding darkness that will be no more.

A group children stand gazing at a stuffed panda which is as large or ever larger than the gathered youth. The ear is reminiscent of one of Goya’s creatures, such as the “bobalicon,” who scares children into submission. But the children look at the bear with an air of ironic amusement: the boy studies the bear with pursed lips and the tall girl analyzes him, while two other children look at the spectator with amused expressions as if asking, “isn’t this a funny game?”.

Here I play with the ink-blacks of the bear and the background as these are offset by the bright lights of the pink roses and white garments of the children. These are worn as though they were shields against the dark. Employing color and light, I present to the viewer with children so strong that even the “bogey-bear” does not faze them.

“Girl With Butterflies” stands as another statement of the powerful ability that light and color have to create happiness. The surface of this painting presents the spectator with myriad kaleidoscopic forms that seem to transform and move as color keys into whirling patterns, manifesting the girl’s status as a beacon of light. This girl’s expression is quietly confident and in harmonious juxtaposition to the excitement generated by the forms that are indicative of the artist’s life.

Here I stage a make-believe game in which a uniformed child point guns at another child, who although the same size, seems to be more innocent, as indicated by his pacifiers. The unbalanced stance of this “Indian” makes him appear more vulnerable. It is a painting dedicated to my father, who was executed in Cuba.

This painting depicts an icon of innocence surrounded by the infinite possibilities of the color white. The child also evokes the salvific qualities of the child Jesus and also the African identity of much of Caribbean culture, in which I, a Cuban, was born in.