Peripheral ARTeries
Nico Amortegui (Colombia / USA)
a.k.a.
Malo
An artist’s statement
Throughout my art practice, I aim to depict the perpetual changing direction of my country – a country where growing up with car bombs and kidnappings on the news everyday was the norm. I paint as a means of describing a childhood where the violence of that time and the people that were directly and indirectly affected were revolving in such a way that it created a menagerie of ‘normal’. As an immigrant, I became cognizant of the transaction between two “allied” countries and of my encounters in a place we had always referred to as the American Dream. Through my art, I seek to relay glimpses into the life of a young Colombian in the late 80s, a teenaged immigrant in the US in the 90s, and highlight the endless struggles of an immigrant with-out-papers. My work is full of color and is a product of expressed energy meaning there are no sketches or previous drawings. I work solely from in-the-moment-energy and I transfer what I see and feel on to the canvas. The rawness of my work exemplifies how my realities were never perfect as the images I render are not either. Nico Amortegui http://nicoarte.tumblr.com/ #196 Winter 44