The Art of Brownsville

I think art is important, perhaps more than other people may think, certainly something that I think about perhaps on a daily bases. I mean art is a positive thing, which has done good to our community, you can really feel history, culture and art coming together in this city. People will make money with its growth , hopefully uplifting the community for the better, creating opportunity for everyone. That's all people need is a chance, a chance to prove themselves of their great worthiness. Its the land of opportunity, as a painter, sure, personally, I feel the city has something to offer and then some. It takes investing yourself in it, and some sacrifice, but everything does. Its there for those who wanted, not for those to complain about.

I don't think that it is only one person making this happen, its everyone. Everyone who contributes, from those who produce art to those who show up to see the art exhibits, from those who teach art to those that write about it in the blogs. Its a funny thing that I have noticed, whenever it gets silent and you think nothing is going on, well that's when things are growing, someone is in production producing the next show.

That is why I continue with The Art of Brownsville blog, I think it is important for people to see what is going on here.

The focus of the blog primarily is and will always be the art and then everything else that comes with it. Sure it strays every one in a while but always comes back to what is important and why we are here.

The idea is to capture the essence of the art that is being produce locally.

I encourage local artists to continue sending in images of the work he or she is producing so that it can be posted here.

I like to think that some day our region will begin to be recognized as a great region that has helped produced great painters.

I don't by any way consider myself to be a Chicano or Post Chicano artist, but simply a painter. I realize now that labels can short live the production of an artist.

I do think that being Mexican-American or American-Mexican for some of us, importantly born and raised in this region, brings several factors to the art we produce that is in my opinion of great importance to contemporary art.

The idea that Mexican-American artist or simply (painters) of this region may perhaps struggle with being label and or viewed as only producing Chicano style work and perhaps have never evovled from that may be a posibility.

If you look at local artist, you got painters certainly working in different mediums but working- abstract, surreal, futurist, expressionist, realism, , I mean certainly part of the evolution of art and not necessarily simply painting tortillas as some may suggest. And if you perhaps look at the migration of people that have come to live in Brownsville , both coming from the northern states or others coming from the south from all over Mexico, some of whom are artist and have now become part of the growth in the local art scene. There is certainly a soup brewing for something good..