Today we’d like to introduce you to Romulo Martinez.
So, before we jump into specific questions about what you do, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
The passion for creation through academic and unconventional artistic materials has been the engine in my life. It is the motor that turns on at each dawn for the search to find answers to my artistic, aesthetic questionings. I believe that we are all born with many talents to develop, but there is always one of them that touches the deepest part of our being and that drives us to develop it, in my case CREATE ART.
I was born in Maracaibo – Venezuela, in a homemade up of a father dedicated to commerce, a homestay mother and two older brothers, a sister and a brother. I was an unconventional introverted child, with a particular taste for humanistic sciences and art. While my older brother played sports with our neighbors in the street, I stayed at home reading art books and illustrated dictionaries, doing my homework, watching educational and scientific programs on television, drawing and modeling clay figures.
There were many afternoons that I dedicated to drawing with school materials such as colored pencils and chalk. That constant drawing helped me to improve the elements of expression of figurative representation, leading me in my basic and high school education to stand out among my fellow students for the skills I had for representation through drawing and painting.
Due to personal insecurities in my adolescence and lack of emotional support, I never considered studying art at an academic and professional level, it was hard to fell free and express what I really feel, that is why when I graduated from Highschool I studied Bachelor in Public Accounting and it was not until two years after I graduated from that degree that I was armed with courage and decided to go back to study and get my Bachelor degree in plastic arts at the University of Zulia against the will of Many. When my parents learned that I would study art, they put their hands on their heads because they knew I would not exercise my career as an accountant. I remember perfectly that my mother told me: are you going to study again for five years in a university? I replied with a resounding: YES!
Deciding to study art professionally was to settle the debt I had with myself for not having studied art before and following my passion. While studying Accounting, I was a mediocre student, but in my Degree in Arts, mention painting, I was the best student. I won two academic awards from my university, the first, best art investigation, and second, the graduate with the highest grades of my promotion. Having decided to study art by my own conviction has been one of the best decisions made in my life.
Once I graduated in Art, I had the opportunity to do a Master in Artistic Production at the Polytechnic University of Valencia – Spain. This study gave me the notions that I currently manage around the world of art, the production of works, criticism and research. This master’s degree led me to a greater growth both personally and professionally as a plastic artist and as a teacher when I returned to my hometown.
As a plastic artist, I participated in collective and individual art shows and exhibitions, in private galleries, arts and cultural centers, and in museums at regional and national levels. I also worked as a teacher of plastic arts in the Directorate of Culture of the University of Zulia, my alma mater.
Due to an unsustainable and corrupt political system, I was forced to emigrate from my country, Venezuela, in search of emotional and economic well-being. This has led me to become a kind of globetrotter in the search for a space and an environment that offers me security, peace and possibilities of artistic creation and exhibition.
In this way, I arrived in Bogotá – Colombia where I lived for three years. This city gave me new aesthetic approaches and the time to develop new works and make two individual exhibitions in private galleries.
Finally, for professional growth and job relocation of my life partner, we moved to Frisco with the best expectations to live and grow as a family. This is my now, we already have more than a year living in this city of a progressive and new urban silhouette. It has been a year of good and comforting artistic achievements that have allowed me to deepen my work as an artist and in my person, it has also been a constant growth: manipulation of new materials, studying English and knowing new artistic fields and their people around Frisco and Dallas.
Geographically and culturally speaking, I like where I am, I like the weather and the plain of the Texas landscape. I like its people, beautiful, friendly and their patience because of my lack of mastery of the English language. I’m still smiling for the future to come and working hard preparing my next solo exhibition for spring 2020 here in Frisco, an opportunity that I received for winning the Best in Show in the Conduit Juried Exhibition organized by Envision Arts.
Has it been a smooth road?
The path taken as a plastic artist has not been easy, I think I have been full of many triumphs, and failures, failures that eventually become a triumph for the lessons left.
I am a plastic artist in constant professional growth through aesthetic questioning. This has led me to manipulate various artistic and industrial materials, which on several occasions, I have had to tame as if it were a wild horse, all with the intention of obtaining those desired results as well as knowing their qualities and material potentialities to understand it and experiment.
There have been many battles fought with my thoughts, my works and the art world. I am a warrior of life and my dreams, so I will not rest from fighting until I see materialized what my mind and desires traced.
Art is subjective, many times we are subject to others to promote, exhibit and have recognition, which is not easy at all, but I have understood that my art education, the many experiences that I have been able to live in different spaces and moments of my life and the freedom to create along with the passion that moves me every day are the true words of conscience that continue to guide my path. There will always be challenges to overcome, that is the beauty of the journey.
We’d love to hear more about your artwork.
I have 15 years professionally dedicated to visual arts, 15 developing a research concept about materializing everything that originally transmits to me through visual codes that can be pictorial material.
Currently, I am focused on studying the light spectrum, that is, the result of the decomposition of white light through a refractor body such as the drop of water, which wipes surfaces and spaces with light and color.
This study has led me to analyze and discern many variables, such as transparency in colors, the organicity of the aqueous refractor body and the transmission of brightness and lightness that evokes a drop of water abstractly but at the same time, how these colors and wraiths are present in our lives, in our conscience and interpretation of feelings and moods, people and judgments.
That is why the presence in my pieces of industrial polyethylene which I colored myself due to its transparency and the use of screen printing, to represent all that my eyes perceive, the layers and the transparency that stands out, multiplies and fades at the same time. I consider that these techniques and representations have led me to possess an individual and recognizable work of art by those who enjoy contemplating them, thanks to the presence of superimposed transparent colors to create light atmospheres insight and with spatial depths and nearness.
I am a plastic artist who enjoys working with different materials with the purpose of promoting and expand my creativity on the workshop, I really can’t avoid touching various techniques under my concept to have a wide range of creative possibilities pushing me to materialize various formalities of presentation of the work of art, going from the two-dimensionality of the academic framework to the three-dimensionality of the volume in the sculptural and installations in space.
Far from the academic and artistic awards and recognitions received throughout my career as a visual artist, what fills me with greater pride in my work has been the constant and persistent dedication that I make day after day to give new conceptions and aesthetic experiences to the public, not give up. What my hands in communication with my mind and affections materialize, is for the enjoyment of the viewer, my enjoyment in the contemplation of the works that I do are displaced to the background, first is the viewer and far behind, in the distance I am. Beyond an economic reward with the artwork, I feel proud when I awake a smile in a spectator, curiosity and questions with one of my pieces, it is at that moment that I feel it was worth it.
As a visual creator, I focus on the aesthetic delight that my works can generate in the visual emotions of the spectator, of the public.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I feel that both Dallas and its surroundings have spaces to show art, as well as organizations that support the promotion. I still find myself knowing the city and the business here, but so far I have found a lot of kindness in its people and I have noticed how Dallas seeks to continue to grow culturally and artistically.
Contact Info:
- Website: romulomartinez.com
- Phone: 4697345856
- Email: roartma@gmail.com
- Instagram: @_romulomartinez
- Facebook: facebook.com/romulojosemartinez
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