Your works are extraordinarily complex visually. How do you manage this complexity and achieve an overall unity in a piece?

I realized in art school that I had to study and learn everything I could in art, theory, history and technique, so that during my creative process I could forget everything I had learned and paint with a clear mind without prejudices, almost like a child. As an artist, you try to reach deep into your unconscious in order to find ways to translate the impulses that drive you to create. My work has evolved and matured through years of study and studio practice. All those years, combined with the influence of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, have helped me develop my style of painting and achieve coherence.

You mentioned that growing up in Veracruz, you were an avid reader of comics. However, today your interest in comics is more formal: in the aesthetics more than the narrative. What do you think is so fascinating about comics, whether to the kids who read them, the millions of people who see the movies, or to artists who like the aesthetic?

These characters are dependable, reliable and never-changing, providing a sense of stability, comfort and relief in this chaotic world.

When I was a child I had a routine with my parents of going to the book store every Sunday after church to get my comic books. As I grew up my interests changed and I was not interested in comic books any more. But I always kept the memories of those days, and when I became an artist I decided to make use of those memories and apply them to my work. I admire comic books as an art form. I think they are an accessible and affordable means of entertainment; there are even graphic novels that exist only online. The superheroes in comic books are always fighting unresolved, never-ending stories of good against evil, where good usually has the upper hand. These characters are dependable, reliable and never-changing, providing a sense of stability, comfort and relief in this chaotic world.

You’ve referenced Abstract Expressionism, and the all-over abstraction in your work is parallel to the Ab-Ex aesthetic. However, the older discourse on the Ab-Ex painters’ work was heavily invested in the idea of gestural abstraction as the unique act of the individual artist. To me, it seems like your working methods imply the same critique of Ab-Ex that was made by the original Pop artists: that the meaning of the work does not ultimately come from the individual’s gesture. Would you say that you have a mixed view of Ab-Ex: part appreciative, part critical?

In my early days in college, my painting style was heavily influenced by the geometry used by Pre-Hispanic cultures from the architecture, to art and decorations. As my studies in art history advanced, Abstract Expressionism began to influence my painting style and the geometry started to turn more and more abstract, until I found myself totally immersed into abstraction without having noticed. This transition took about four years, Abstract Expressionism was inescapable in my case. Later on in my studies I became fascinated with Pop Art, and today it plays an intrinsic role in my work.

You described your vision of developing a Warhol-type Factory, and now with globalization and technology, you can have assistants in China while you are in Dallas. Have your methods of producing work evolved over time as you’ve used this system, and does the “Factory” concept still guide your approach?

My idea of working with assistants like a Warhol-type Factory came as a necessity. I realized that if I wanted to be in multiple venues at multiple times I was going to need enough works of art to display. As my paintings became more and more complex, and larger in size, it began to take me longer to make a painting. That is when I started thinking about ways to accelerate the production without compromising my style in any way. In that moment I began to look deeper into Warhol’s Factory and also the production process of Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, and specifically the way they work with assistants. My methods have not changed and having an assistant has helped me tremendously from painting the basic shapes and forms in the composition, to larger backgrounds and placement of the imagery in general. I paint without stress knowing that I can meet deadlines. I can devote more time creating compositions for my paintings, furthering my work over all, and experimenting with new techniques.

You have also described the technique of décollage. This technique can give a piece a quite violent aesthetic, with the sense of ripping, cutting, tearing. This violence seems to contrast with the bright, shiny colors of the comic book aesthetic, but of course, comic book narratives are extremely violent too. Is that sense of violence, or even aggression towards the surface of the picture, significant for your work?

Every day on my way to college I would walk by this same “billboard,” stop, and look at the new posters and fliers that had been posted, and discover new compositions, new layers of colors and transparencies. It looked to me like a painting from the Renaissance in terms of fixed space, as if time had stopped.

My approach to décollage is quite different; I don’t see it as aggression, but as a way of layering, building up, and discovering. In my hometown of Guanajuato, Mexico, there are sections of wall in some buildings designated for public advertisement. Anything from a movie, a play, a concert, etc. can be found on posters and flyers glued onto this section of the wall, much like a billboard. Every day on my way to college I would walk by this same “billboard,” stop, and look at the new posters and fliers that had been posted, and discover new compositions, new layers of colors and transparencies. It looked to me like a painting from the Renaissance in terms of fixed space, as if time had stopped. After a few weeks there was a thick layer of posters and fliers that had to be removed, and the city would send workers to clean these “billboards.” When this cleaning process occurred I was there taking photographs of these marvelous compositions created by strangers over a period of time. It was like watching archaeologists digging and discovering, and I would ask them to please stop so that I could take pictures. They only used paint remover and spatulas.

You noted that your undergraduate studies in fine arts, at the Universidad de Guanajuato, were very traditionally-oriented, while the graduate program at UT Dallas is more digitally-oriented. Now, looking back from this point in your career, I wondered how you reflect on your university artistic education. Are there things that you only learned after finishing your studies? Or perhaps, what would you tell students who are choosing among different types of education in art?

The education system in Mexico is quite different. When you get to university level you have already chosen what you want to study, and you specialize in it. It is five years of intensive theoretical, practical and studio practices. When I came to UT Dallas to pursue my MFA in Arts and Technology, it had been more than ten years since I had graduated from college, and during that time I had been showing my paintings all over the world. It was a perfect combination for me in terms of merging the elements of my BFA from Mexico, which included the traditional training in Plastic Arts and in-depth Art History studies, with the technological component of my MFA program from UT Dallas. The only thing nobody taught me was the business of being an artist, the managerial, financial, and advertising aspects of it. You can only learn about these as you go, from experience.

When I decided to go to art school my parents told me that it did not matter what I wanted to do in life, as long as I would be doing what I love and be devoted to it. They told me to take it seriously, to work hard and try to be the best at what I do. I am sharing this advice to any student who wants to become an artist, or anything else in life.