June Artist
🎨Introducing our Color Palette of the Month artist, Mata Ruda, AKA Karlito Miller Espinosa!
Project Title: “Border Baroque”
Medium: Oil on Wood
“I pick my color palettes mostly intuitively and from the source material but it is always depending on the medium and aesthetic and conceptual goals of each piece,” Mata Ruda stated.
Q&A with Mata Ruda
Q- How/when did you start making art?
My mother and my grandmother always made art and were very creative so since I was a little kid I was always drawing.
Q- What does your creative process look like?
My process is always changing but usually it includes piecing together a wide array of diverse references to stitch together a narrative regardless of what medium I am using. As well as some classical or punk music and long hours of solitude and focus.
Q- Who are some of your influences as a creative?
Diego Rivera, Caravaggio, Mozart’s Requiem, Bad Brains, Deftones and many, many more.
Q- What projects are you working on now that you are most excited about?
I am working on a few projects that involve terracotta pots and wood stain, I am currently taking a break from the recent oil paintings I’ve been making during the pandemic.
Q- Can you discuss ways your art practice has changed throughout the years and any moments in your life or surroundings that have influenced your work?
One particular significant chapter in my practice was when I was making large scale public murals, it taught me a lot about the world, politics, people, communities, place specificity, quality vs. equality, and contextual circumstances.
Q- Can you speak to the ways living in the Southwest impacted your work? What has the land taught you?
The Southwest has played a major role in my work in terms of setting the stage for a variety of global, social, and political narratives that all meet head on here in the borderlands. The Southwest is where worlds collide.
