Artist Statement

My work begins with the eyes. They reflect the experience, the expression, and the environment that carved each wrinkle. The sun, the work, and the years all leave their mark. That is my subject.

My work is figurative portraiture rooted in the Latino Southwest. My subjects are people from my community: my family, my elders, my neighbors. I paint them because their stories are worth representing, and because, for most of my life, I never stopped to ask what those stories actually were. Returning to art after sixteen years forced me to confront that question. Who and what does my art represent? What does it mean to be Chicano? Each brushstroke helps me answer these questions.

In 2008, one month before graduating from the University of New Mexico with a BFA, my daughter was born, and the economy was in shambles. I made a choice: family first, art later. I told myself it was temporary. But the harder I worked, the further painting moved from reach.

Sixteen years passed. I climbed the corporate ladder, only to look down and find that distant dream still waiting. Losing my brother and my mother, then watching my father face a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, made the truth impossible to ignore: postponing the truest version of yourself is its own kind of loss.

At the end of 2024, I left my corporate career in software sales in search of something deeper. On January 1, 2025, I committed to painting full time, and I have not stopped since.

My formal training was in drawing and sculpture. Everything else I taught myself, because the stories demanded it.

-Michael Padilla