We were lucky to catch up with Carlos Franco recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Carlos thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

When I was young, in fifth grade, I was asked “When I grow up I want to be….” , in that moment I wanted to be like Charles Schulz due to the massive influence of Charlie Brown had on my childhood. Before entering high school, I applied for an Arts Magnet school and was accepted spending the next 4 years learning to improve as an artist, each time getting closer to what I really wanted to do. Upon graduating, I took a small break to focus on my other interests, but soon after that first semester, Art was just calling me back. I couldn’t help but to enroll in a drawing class, thinking on continuing my arts studies and possibly double majoring, in History and Arts. I stuck to the Fine Arts, as I feel in love with painting, I continued my studies and graduated from The University of Miami. In my final semester, I found myself gravitating towards printmaking, a technique I continue to hone to this day. Looking back, regardless of the path I would’ve taken, I feel I would have always had art right there with me, if not professionally, as a hobby. It is a life long passion of mine.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Carlos Franco, I grew up in Miami and I’ve always wanted to be creative. One of my earliest memories, was were one of my elementary school teachers asking if I would like to apply to another school that would hone these skills. For me, Art is liberating and something that essential to living, not only for myself but also for society. Art comes in many different molds, during my time in High School, my focus was drawing, one of the biggest influences at that time was M.C Escher, who created unparalleled realistic and distorted imagery, using mirrors, tesselation, multiple point perspective to trick to viewer.

In College, I got the chance to use oil paints, and honestly that changed my world and how I view painting, in thinking about what i wanted to paint and spending time with friends, who would later become a core group of friends. We would discuss painting for hours on end, always trying to improve our skills and our vision of what we wanted to create. Art history teaches us the established artist that are easily recognizable like Picasso or Dali, but I thought about who were the painters whose work when looking at pages, i couldn’t help but want to see them in person, one of my favorite painters from this group is Lucien Freud, his paintings even through reproductions seems so viscous, I want to touch the layers of paint, I want to be within an inch observing the colors.

Other notable painters, from this older group were Antonio Lopez Garcia, Edward Hopper, Euan Uglow and David Park.

During this time, I started investigating contemporary painters, looking for living artist that I can look to for influence. I really wanted to know who were the artist creating works that resonated with me. Some of the artist that spoke to me through their works were Alex Kanevsky, Kim Cogan, Benjamin Björklund, Karim Hamid, Ann Gale, Michael Borremans among other artist who I constantly continue to observe their development with awe and drives me to push myself as a painter.

Recently, I’m inspired by Kenichi Hoshine, Kai Samuels-Davis, Wendelin Wohlgemuth, Hiroshi Sato, Anthony Cudahy, Nicolas Uribe, Salman Toor and Kris Knight among many.

In 2013, I moved with my family to Uruguay, it was followed by 5 years of intense production, a lot of the focus during this time was based on Marc Auge theory of ‘non-space’, who talks about spaces in which we constantly interact with on a daily occurance but are invisibilized to us. Being in a new city and country, I focused on the places I was traversing, during errands into the city, for school, just my surroundings. What came out were these layered paintings in which through influences of abstract painters at UM, I used gloss varnish to layer the paint, some of these paintings would have between 5-10 layers of varnish to complete the paintings, I used as much color as I painted in these thin layers to create a particular style that really captured everything that I wanted out of the paints. This culminated in my first solo exhibition ‘Fractured Moments’ in 2015.

The following series, I changed my view to nature and the surrounding landscape around the farm I was living on. I would walk around exploring this place, observing all the differences and changes through weather and seasons, I would exhibit a large portions of these paintings as a collective with friends across Montevideo and Uruguay, the name of the series of paintings would be called ‘Campo’.

One of my biggest acheivements of my career would be my solo exhibition, ‘Espacio sin Memoria’ in 2018 at the Centro Cultural Kavlin, this is a series in which I departed from using gloss but kept the observant eye towards these ‘non-spaces’, a lot of the images come from an old convent in the center of Montevideo, a friend invited me to visit before demolition and I took advantage to be inspired by this place that had been abandoned. This was a great achievement for myself, being able to present this body of work that I put so much of my being into.

My final solo exhibition to date was held in 2021, at Lowe Mills Arts in Huntsville, Alabama, titled ‘In the space between, I play with ghost’. This was an ambitious series, because I decided to step out and introduce works on paper that would be these ghostly drawings that were layered to depict places I visited and observed throughout my travels. The paintings were a group of about 15 small pieces that were presented without any stretcher bars, I wanted to viewer to see the painting as I see it, as it is produced and made since most of my work is stapled on the wall. Looking back at my body of work, these have been the tightest paintings I have made and felt like I was truly stepping into making the work I envisioned.

Since this last exhibition, I focused on creating all types of works, such as prints, zines, translations, collaborations, video works for a group project, traveling print exhibition that visited the US, Mexico and beyond. I continue to explore through different media but creating as a necesity for me, to truly live, I have to create.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I think the more rewarding aspect as an artist is to have time not only to create but to complete a project. As we all experience, time is very limited especially as we get older, work, family, responsibilities but that feeling after completing a project, an idea in which we struggle through, think and re-think as we spend our limited free time. Seeing that process end and seeing the result, is very rewarding. I would second, would be exhibiting that work and presenting it to friends, showing them the end result of this labor of love and having them see the work, hearing their thoughts and being inspired and inspirating each other to continue to create.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

At the moment, has been the biggest pivot in my career, I’ve recently finished a programming course. It was the most intense 9 months of my life, in which I was unable to devote any free time to creativity. Now that I have finished, I am focusing on trying to meld this new path with my creativity to be able to present new ideas of how UI/UX can look like, and continue learning to see how both can push each other.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cfranco_ruiz/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/cfranco87
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/pinol_press/ printmaking Instagram page

Image Credits
Order of images From ‘Fractured Moments’ (2014-2015) image 1-2 From ‘Campo’ (2015-2016) image 3 From ‘Espacio sin Memoria’ (2016-2017) image 4-5 From ‘In the space between, I play with ghosts’ (2018-2019) image 6-8