Today we’d like to introduce you to Pablo Hernandez.
Hi Pablo, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
My name is Pablo Hernandez, I was born in the border city of El Paso, Texas, to a family of immigrants from Zamora de Hidalgo, Michoacán, México. Growing up in the US to a Mexican immigrant family was like growing up between two worlds. It was a challenge for me to fit in both in the US with other kids and in Mexico with my family. I didn’t have many friends so from a young age I would come home from school and draw. I loved escaping into my worlds and capturing them on paper.
I loved that I was good at it and that other kid would come to me and ask me to draw things for them. I just loved creating art. After I graduated high school in 2010 I wanted to be an oil painter, I wanted to move to California and chase that big dream of attending a big art school and being published in big art magazines and showing in big galleries, but my family is not rich, chasing that dream would have meant burying myself and my parents in a mountain of student loan debt.
Not to mention my father wished for something more practical for me, constantly reminding me that I was the first in the family to be born in the US and I was squandering an opportunity to make a good living for myself. He was only doing what he thought was best for me. After two years of soul searching, I decided college was not for me, but I still was certain that I wanted to pursue art, and in 2012 I began a tattoo apprenticeship.
It was the most available outlet of art for me and still allowed me to make a decent living. Tattooing took up most of my time, but I still made an attempt to keep painting, but once again I felt pulled between two worlds. It has been a feeling that has been very prevalent throughout my life, but now I am thankful for it because this feeling allowed me to explore why I felt like I couldn’t belong, it allowed me to dig deep in myself, and I dug deep enough to start exploring my roots.
I immersed myself very deeply in studying my Mexican cultural heritage, by traveling to Mexico and researching both ancient Mexican cultures and deeply rooted European traditions adopted after the conquest. I learned that I come from a people that has been culturally displaced for hundreds of years.
I come from older generations that were told not to speak their language, or honor their timeless traditions and felt shame in being who they are. I come from a violent union of war, conquest, and untold generational trauma. I learned I am a Mestizo of mixed Mexican Indigenous and Spanish blood. I am a Chicano, a Mexican-American bound to two lands cut in half by an imaginary line in the sand we call the border.
I have found a lot of understanding and beauty in Mexico, but I also see people robbed of their roots and working very hard to walk without feet. Walking without knowing where they’re going because they don’t know where they come from. The least we can do to honor our ancestors is to study their traditions and history and acknowledge that they are a part of us. Or even better we can help care for the remaining indigenous groups still living in Mexico and help secure their way of life.
This way a mestizo will not suffer from displacement, but be a bridge connecting two cultures and actively reconnecting back to the roots. At this point in my journey, I have come across an opportunity to open a tattoo shop and art gallery with some friends where I can showcase handmade art from Mexico and my community in El Paso as well.
The challenge now is to be able to embody all I have learned in my tattoos, my art, and my way of life in a graceful way. Maybe through this project, we can plant a seed in my community and help rediscover and honor our Mestizo heritage by sharing the history of marginalized Mexican indigenous cultures as old as millennia.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I think when I struggled the most was after high school. We think the public school system prepares the youth well enough to enter the working world, but in my experience it was honestly a lot of pressure to be told I have to go to college to earn a decent living and, at age 17 with no experience of the world, to pick a profession that I was going to do for the rest of my life. It didn’t help that my dad was constantly on my back about picking a financially lucrative career path.
For most of my childhood, I was a good student, did my work and had high grades, and even got some scholarships and grants. Then after graduation, I realized I was not economically suited to attend the art schools I wanted to go to. My scholarships would barely pay for a semester. I realized art was a career for people who were already financially comfortable. It made me wonder if people didn’t have to worry about paying rent and bills, would more of us be artists and creators?
I tried a semester as an art major at UTEP and hated it. The fact that had to take all the beginner first courses while my peers from other schools got to skip them, because my high school didn’t offer AP art classes made me resent it even more. I was starting to think my father was right, and I changed my major to psychology. I honestly liked those classes, I had straight A’s, and even my homeroom teacher suggested to I should apply as a teacher’s aide for next semester. But then something funny happened.
With my loads of homework and studying, I no longer had time to make art. I felt I was losing a part of myself that was present since I was able to pick up a crayon. After a semester, I fell into a deep depression and even got sick on finals week. I remember laying in my room in a fevered daze and seeing my half-finished paintings around my room staring at me collecting dust almost like children begging for their parent’s attention
In those moments I decided I would pursue art with all of my heart even if it might mean I would struggle financially. I began my tattoo apprenticeship about a year later and fortunately stayed financially stable, and that road has led me to where I am now.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My art draws inspiration from tales and traditions of ancient Mexico, but also the Catholic tradition that nearly snuffed it all out. In my work, I incorporate stylized and simple colorful figures reminiscent of American Traditional Tattooing, Mexican folk art, and ancient Mexican codices. This inspiration shows through my tattoo work, in my oil paintings, and most recently in my murals. I am still new to mural painting, but it is something I would like to explore more.
To me, it may be the most effective way to give a message, the best way to give art to a community, and the best way to have as many people as possible see it for free. I am currently in the process of opening a shop and art gallery in El Paso, through this I aim to have local community artists expose their work, and share work I find through traveling Mexico. I’m excited to be able to show intricate beadwork crafts made by friends who are Wixárica people. Hopefully, it all goes well.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @Tinta.sangre.915 and @pabs.tinta.sangre
Image Credits
Hasan Hejazi (@temictlishots)
