BlackCommentator.com
cartoonist/artist Eric Garcia produces historically based,
politically charged criticism, with the goal of creating
dialogue about the contemporary issues”. That’s
how Garcia describes his artwork. A versatile artist working
in an assortment of media, from paintings, to hand-printed
posters, to sculpture installations, Garcia’s art
has a common goal of educating and challenging. Click
here
to contact brother Eric. His website is southvalleyart.com.
Artist
Statement
Every
warrior has a weapon and mine is my art. In my work I
try to visually examine the versions of North American
history that have been overlooked, whitewashed, or flat
out deleted. Aware that history is used as a strategy
of domination, I attempt to subvert through my art the
various dominant histories of the conquering powers. History,
culture, and politics are three key issues of my work.
I politically charge allegories of my cultural history
of the Americas, in hopes that the viewer will learn,
question and also react. I visually depict complex issues
that have shaped our history, and in turn shaped our identity,
and our future.
The
media I use range from paintings, to hand-printed posters,
to inked political cartoons, but they all have a common
goal of educating and challenging. My artistic style is
shaped by both early childhood influences of the comic-book
graphic style and later by the theatric Spanish Colonial/Baroque.
I fuse these two different –but connected–
narrative styles by drawing out my figures as graphic
caricatures, then placing them in dramatic settings, sometimes
accompanied by satirical script. Like the comic-book cover
and the Baroque paintings before them, I try to tell a
story with just one crucial scene.
The
power of imagery is a tremendous vehicle for delivering
information. The Mexican muralists, Goya, and Guadalupe
Posada, are only a few of the artists that showed me how
powerful the visual can be. Through my art I try to make
an assortment of visual objects that not only reflects
on the past but also poses challenges to the present.
I consider my art a historically based, politically charged
criticism, with the goal of creating dialogue about the
issues that affect history and identity.
