MICHELLE CARMEN GOMEZ - STATEMENT

“I’ve taken photographs since I was a young girl. I think I always knew that my life would revolve around my art. The specific medium was harder to determine. I studied journalism and literature at the University of Texas at Austin but, after working as an on-air reporter at a local television station, I realized that I needed to get back on track. I moved to Los Angeles in 1992 and started working in the movie business, but continued to take photographs and sell them. Friends and colleagues encouraged me to take my photos to a gallery and that was the beginning of my artistic journey. I sold prints for years through two separate galleries, but knew I wanted to explore other mediums. I wanted to get my hands dirty, literally. Once I began silk-screening my images on canvas and doing freehand brushwork, the process thrilled me. The notion that any one of my photographs that connects with a viewer can translate to a work on canvas is expansive and inspiring to me. Most recently I’ve been asked to do family portraits on canvas, in the same vein as my graphic work. I take the portraits, experiment with composition, blend colors, and change screens until I see where the pieces should fit and where the emphasis should be. My paintings heighten the emblematic components in my photographs, by pulling out the mythological associations in the images. I think it’s my literary background that informs my work on canvas, I see the people and events that represent themes, accent archetypes, and are tinged with my hopeful optimism. I frame my photographs with this ideology. I guess it makes sense that the people that appreciate my work are drawn to the more prominent symbols in my images. Each word, each image, has a profound meaning to me and, when brought together on a single canvas, intensifies and expands its solitary significance. Art can be mysterious, evocative; I strive to achieve this in my work, achieve a magical essence. My aim is to create work that people can revisit and rediscover, work that fuses itself to the viewer. Art should serve the psyche in the same way that music serves the listener.”

Like many who grew up in rural America, with its wide open spaces and unhurried pace, notable photographer and artist Michelle Carmen Gomez is intrigued by places that still show signs of the vernacular past. She is infinitely fascinated by the profundity of ordinary moments. Her art, a kinetic blend of her serigraphs and freehand brushwork using vibrant acrylics on canvas, juxtaposes her classic photographic images against a more pop medium. Critics have commented that Michelle’s work is, “Warhol, without the cynicism.” Gomez believes that art is essential to life and that intent infuses images in the same way that authenticity infuses the soul. “My first impressions of a location, subject, or event dictate the way in which an image materializes,” says Gomez. “It’s part technical and part serendipitous, as is my work on canvas. I go to a city, get lost, observe, trust my impressions, and shoot images that represent what I construe as quintessential moments.” Her work has a narrative quality, seamlessly unifying formality and spontaneity, structure and fluidity; she is an artist whose method is systematic, faithful, unassuming and timeless Collectors of Gomez’s photography include celebrities, corporations, private collectors and professional athletes.