When I was little, I put my eye right up to the TV screen, expecting to see a magnification of the details of the characters - a microscopic view of skin texture, hair, and fabric.   But what occurred in reality was a dislocation, as the image disappeared and was replaced by horizontal and vertical bands of flickering light. Recently I have been paying close attention to TV static, noticing the absence of a legible image and the presence of something iconic and disturbing - a repetitive abstraction. These anxious repeating rhythms also occur in the Hail Mary prayer and in the houses of my block.   They can be found in large crowds and in my mother's crotchet patterns.  

My work deals with the relationship between closeness and distance, private and public, and the difficulties of integrating the two sides.   There is a further tension between specificity and abstraction.   Interacting with the paper over an extensive period of time, my attention moves from source material to medium.   The process of repetitive mark making reflects my experiences in therapy, in which the past is revived through memory over and over.   Arduous repetition also mirrors aspects of penance absorbed through my Mexican Catholic background.

Since moving away from Mexico I have been using an increasing amount of imagery related to the United States: significant rivers, famous mountains, and the iconic landscapes engraved on the back of coins.   But even in the final drawings this subject matter remains distant to me, I connect to the work (and the ideas behind it) only through making marks on paper.   On one level, specificity is important: which river? or which mountain?, but another kind of connection is made when the individual images cease to be legible.