"Vigil In Unity"

We can begin to look at Luis Velasquez' art from two vantage points that are perhaps incommensurable, or at least incommensurable from a single rigid outlook, and this is perhaps what is interesting about his artworks. On one hand, there are the figurative components to his paintings which - with flourishes here and there, say the expressionistic colors of "Sleepless Dream" or the cutout quality of the woman in "Vigil in Unity" - very much come out of a long tradition, and thus have ties that go back hundreds of years. The figurative elements of his works, the women and the cats, establish themes that tentacle their way backwards through romanticism and primitivism.

At the same time, and within each artwork, there is a facet of abstractness that incongruously plays off of the figurative forms though. It is a difficult proposition to attempt to force these two aspects into unity with each other, though they certainly are in communion. The figurative elements anchor Velasquez' work in a way that allows the free-form or essentially non-form elements to wind their way around vinelike throughout the paintings. Whether this is a conscious ecological element that in the end reinforces the naturalness of the subjects or whether they indeed stand apart from that nature is perhaps undecidable.

-Andrew Beckerman