Skateboarders

My recent body of work of skateboarders is inspired by memories of growing up in the San Fernando Valley in California in the 1970s during California’s drought. As a mixed-race kid (Mexican/Irish) growing up on the so-called "white side" of Interstate 405, I confronted a conflict of racial expectations that no longer exist in the skating world, which has evolved into a multi-cultural community whose locus is the urban scene. Indeed, my Mexican cousins ridiculed me for doing “white things,” like skateboarding, with my “white friends.” But joy has no racial boundaries and the jouissance of skating, even all of the falling and sustaining some serious injuries are reminders of the vibrancy of youthful bodies; reminders of my friends and the ability of joy to cross racial/cultural expectations—which is exactly how skateboarding has evolved. The making of a painting is an empathic practice, a way of using my body to re-inhabit my youthful body. It is a way of bringing memory and feeling back into the world both physically and emotionally. For me, the motifs are a way of framing conflicted experiences—the pleasure and pain, the flying and falling. The images are also about the ordinary pleasures and the discomfort of isolation one feels during their teen years. However, in retrospect, these images are a way of reconciling pain, reconciling cultural expectations and ambivalences; and most importantly, a reconciliation with a body that can no longer do what it once did. The making of a painting has become, like the site of the empty pool, a place to experience the freedom of possibility, which also includes the possibility of falling flat on my face.