Luis Rosa-Valentin

My art is influenced by the experiences in my life. Mainly my experiences in combat as an infantryman and subsequently being struck by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Iraq 2008:

My meeting with God, my brush with the devil, my flight from death.
My coma dreams, my waking nightmares, and my struggle to grasp this new world.
My marriages, my children, and the fear of being a burden to them, hampering their growth.

Along the way I have also experienced profound success:

New love, strength in family, laughter.
And finally, the journey on which you accompany me; Renewed purpose.

The primary means by which I portray my experiences is oil on canvas. The color and control possible with oil paints lend themselves well to creating the compositions I choose. Similarly, the ability to lose control can help resolve ideas and memories I have had trouble expressing. My underpaintings are generally a loose and vaguely controlled action using only raw umber, a rag, and some thinner. After my loose idea is formed I return with color and paint brushes to refine, or focus, these ideas. Sometimes certain experiences demand specific mediums. Materials such as brass casings (spent bullet casings) recur in my art as a means to return the mind to the battlefield. Nothing reminds me more of those long-sustained firefights than the sight of piles of brass.

Other mediums I enjoy using are charcoal and pastels. The tactile feedback and the mess left afterward offer me a sense of catharsis I can only get through those dry mediums. Finally, a medium that offers a specific aesthetic to my work, is printmaking. The long and involved process of making etchings, engravings, and aquatints offers a means of using hypercontrol to slow and focus the mind. A very important necessity when living with a moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI) such as mine.