Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Angelo Ray Martínez . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Angelo Ray thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I studied painting in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at the University of Colorado Denver (Class of 2010) and then went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Class of 2016). In my education, I learned a lot of technical painting skills and developed my ability for conceptual thinking, but I feel that it wasn’t until after graduating that I really started making artwork with a more developed and authentic vision.

In an academic setting, the student is learning many necessary skills, including how to produce a cohesive body of work, but there is often some desire to also please others (the professor, peers, etc.) and create something that makes logical sense. As a young artist, you are exposed to many successful artists that can articulate their creative practice in profound ways, and it is natural to try to emulate this in your own work. However, those successful artists usually spent years developing their ideas. In hindsight, I probably spent too much time trying to create a sophisticated body of work, before I was really capable.

After I graduated, there was much less pressure to figure everything out and I was able to work more intuitively, while also embracing a certain level of failure in my work. For a while, I didn’t know where the work was headed or even why it was important to me, but eventually, I was able to develop the current body of work that has been more widely exhibited and collected.

My education was incredibly important, but at the same time, it took a while outside of academia to progress and mature my creative practice.

Great, we appreciate you sharing that with us. Can you please tell our readers about yourself, how you got into your industry / business / discipline / craft etc, what type of products/services/creative works you provide?

My current ongoing series, Quest of the Steelhead, is a collection of paintings depicting scenes from an imaginary video game about sport fishing on the St. Joseph River of Indiana (and Michigan). The series is a blend of fantasy and reality. While some compositions represent actual ecological locations, others depict fictitious arrangements with nonnative fish species that are intended as metaphors for the complexities of human existence. In this aquatic world, pixelated images become symbolic of the intangible, questioning the nature of awareness and how one understands what one cannot physically perceive.

My work is an exploration of the pixel, turned pigment. The final images are rendered in paint, but they are a hybrid of both digital and analog processes. I create detailed digital sketches that are inspired by a combination of found imagery from the internet, vintage video games, and other forms of computerized visual communication. The preliminary digital sketches are then translated into physical paintings as a means of exploring one of the key characteristics of 21st-century life, the constant influence of digital technologies on the mind/body; a play between the virtual and physical, the tangible and intangible.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the opportunity to inspire the imagination of others. I love engaging in discourse about the ideas contained in any artwork, whether it is mine or the work of another artist. It is a great way to learn more about each other and our shared experiences.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

For me, the objective of making art is largely one of self-discovery. But for the audience, I hope that they are able to engage in some of the same sense of wonder and intrigue that I perceive in the world around us, that they walk away from the artwork with a greater curiosity for the mysteries that surround human experience.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.angeloraymartinez.com
• Instagram: @angeloraymartinez

Image Credits
All images are courtesy of the artist.