Jose L. Santos

Artist Statement

by Jose L. Santos

When I’m creating art, my visual language comes rather easily for me, kind of like breathing.

The key is to remain completely free and open and accepting. Staying with it for as long as need be until things are resolved and exhausted. Even accepting imperfections when they add to the work. It’s done when I have no more room and nothing left to say.

Within the past year, I’ve been working on a new body of work, a painting collage series. I start with a painting on flattened metal which creates a relief. The painting is worked and reworked with lots of layers of paint. It’s almost as important to build a background as it is to create a meaningful composition.

I really enjoy discovering materials along the way. I do have one rule that I set for myself before I start anything new – that is that I have to find objects and those objects have to be completely flattened and interesting. I wait, sometimes over a long period of time, for the earth to hand out these exciting gifts, which I believe may be overlooked by others. I prefer the twisted metal pieces that I find on the streets. I wish for things with color, not just silver and black. I wait for certain materials to come my way. I take it all if it’s given to me. The metal must be run over many times by cars. I think of it like a printing press. I have to consider it being ripe for the picking right off the road. The object has to be seasoned and ready to be consumed and enjoyed. Then I care about it, and take care of it.

I’ve been an elementary school art teacher now for a number of years, which has influenced me to approach my work like a child would, open and without judgment. I work fast but think about it all pretty slowly. I don’t focus on perspective. I want overlapping shapes to show my understanding of form. No worries about rules. Fresh, immediate, an expressive response. I need to communicate an experience that is temporary and fleeting. Then life is captured. That blurry line between art and reality.

I like to exhaust a subject or theme and then move onto something else. I would love to be able to say I’ve found my visual voice and this is what my work is going to look like from now on. However, based on previous experience, I know this may not hold true. For my work is always evolving and changing and I never know what my next piece will look like. I have no idea where I’m going. I just know I want to think about each piece and spend some time on it and see what evolves and where I take it and it takes me.

I would like to think my most recent work is emotionally charged, reflecting personal contemporary ideas. I like to believe that the more emotionally charged one is, the better the art work. When one is having a lot going on in one’s life, the work becomes more honest, more expressive, more wired. It is reflected in the creation. This may or may not be true, I don’t know. I do know I can say whatever I want in silence with a visual scream.