How a Style is Born (and How it Dies)

“Stand Tall” | Mixed media on canvas | 2014

The Artist and the Style

I don’t have a consistent visual language.

The idea of “having a style” never convinced me. If I had to describe myself, I’d say I have many. Or none. What stays constant isn’t the form, it’s the subject: the social, the emotional, human behaviour.

For a while my work looked outward. Protest, criticism, irony. Now it looks inward. I work from what’s happening to me, what I feel, what I still don’t understand. Every project ends up a mirror, and the style adapts to whatever I’m living through.

My visual language formed between the street art and skateboarding of Portland and San Francisco, while I was studying architecture in Caracas. Erik Otto, Blaine Fontana, Jeremy Fish. They showed me illustration could move from the street to the gallery without losing honesty.

Before that, in Venezuela, Pedro León Zapata hit me a different way. I only knew his political cartoons. Then I saw an exhibition of his fine-art work and understood that an artist can have layers, contradictions, stages. That the voice doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it just watches.

I’ve always mixed styles. I get bored easily. If a technique calls me, I study it until I have it. Then I mix it with what I was already doing, bend it, adapt it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. What I care about is the search.

Some things repeat. Certain lines, colours, rhythms. The rest mutates.

Moving to Australia changed the tone too. I stopped talking about protest because I didn’t have the same context or the same urgency. And I found myself asking: what am I protesting now?

Arrived | Digital illustration on photography | 2010

How a style dies

For me, style is tied to the stage I’m in, or the skill I’m building. It shifts when there’s nothing new to say. When I start repeating.

When I feel it, I stop. I look for something new to learn. I don’t kill the style on purpose, I set it aside. Give it a break. I know it comes back, transformed, when I apply the new thing onto a piece or a project.

Between styles, pauses. They used to drive me crazy. Now I enjoy them. Part of the process.

If I feel lost, I stop, breathe, and trust that what’s coming is a mix of everything before plus whatever I don’t know yet. I used to punish myself for not producing. Now I get it: rest produces too. A rested person makes better decisions. Simple.

Untitled | Mixed media on canvas | 2020

The themes

The forms change, but the emotional and social subject is always there. Sometimes it points outward, a critique of how we behave together. Sometimes it stays inside, an exploration of my own states. Both end up in the same place: what we do today affects the kid we were and the one coming behind us.

Style is branding. A tool so the audience recognises you, so they feel at ease. Art, at least mine, comes from inside. The audience, in most of my personal work, is the last piece of the process.

“Art is complete when it interacts with someone.” That lets me not think about the audience while I create. If I did, I’d stop being honest with myself.

I’d rather be known for what I say, not how I say it. The form isn’t irrelevant, though. I’m always looking for the point where the two meet.

I don’t control whether I have a style. With practice and repetition I imagine you end up with one. But I don’t repeat. Not yet.

My job today isn’t to hold a line. It’s to keep exploring, keep being curious. Even when that means breaking what worked yesterday.

Caged | Acrylic marker on paper | 2025