Besame Mucho II

Bésame Mucho is about remembering life in Spanish Harlem, the wonderful color, food and music! This series reflects the fragmentation we're witnessing in our world—the breaking apart of what we hold beautiful. I create it through an act that feels both painful and necessary: taking my own paintings, works I've loved and found beautiful, and literally cutting them apart. Pieces from my beloved Abstract Memories series.I gather fragments from several paintings and reassemble them on wooden panels or canvas, then seal everything in layers of hot wax using the encaustic technique. With a heat gun, I smooth the wax until it creates a lustrous surface you can gently touch with your fingertips—something whole emerging from the pieces.

ENERGETIC INTERVENTIONS Artist Statement
"Energetic Interventions" emerged from a place of profound civic anxiety—a visceral response to perceived threats against the foundational principles of our nation. Confronting fears about the erosion of constitutional protections, civil liberties, and voting rights, I turned to my own archive of beloved paintings as both subject and metaphor.
In an act of controlled destruction mirroring the dismantling I witnessed in our political landscape, I began cutting apart works I had cherished, transforming personal loss into creative inquiry. What initially felt like devastation revealed unexpected possibility: fragments from disparate paintings, when reunited, spoke to one another in new visual languages. These recombined pieces—affixed to canvas and cradled wooden panels, then sealed beneath layers of encaustic wax applied with heat—became testaments to resilience and regeneration.
The series ultimately asks: Can we forge beauty from chaos? Can fragmentation lead to stronger, more complex wholes? Through the alchemical process of destruction and reconstruction, "Energetic Interventions" proposes that even in our most fractured moments, there exists the potential for transformation and renewed meaning.