The Art of Brandon Maldonado

Artist’s Statement The visual language of art has the ability to communicate beyond the confines of spoken language. I believe this quality is the essence of visual arts and is the medium’s greatest strength. Throughout the course of humanity art has been used to inform civilizations, functioning as a powerful propaganda tool with great success. With this in mind I pick up my paintbrushes and attempt to use art as a vehicle for inspiring change. American artist Jackson Pollock stated, “Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.” The process of making a painting in itself is a meditation for me. I discriminately choose the themes of my work, making certain that each concept is ultimately something I believe is worth saying and contemplating. These are often associated with the many aspects of human experience, from life’s joys, sorrows and struggles, to the mysteries of our mortal existence. As I meditate on these concepts through the process of painting I strive to understand them and in return, bring that understanding into my life with the intention of making myself a better individual. My goal as an artist is for my work to direct the viewer beyond the technical aspects of the imagery and toward a more profound, emotional and metaphysical experience of the concepts to which the images are merely references. I hope that the end products which you see here may serve as visual affirmations of these concepts to all who view my works.

Bio Brandon Maldonado was born in 1980. He grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an environment rich in hispanic arts and culture. As a child, he was introduced to the fantastical realm of Star Wars and the monsters of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which first sparked his artistic imagination. In his teens he turned to graffiti, an influence that still can be seen in his works to this day. Maldonado holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from the College of Santa Fe with a focus in Philosophy and world religion he also holds an associate’s degree in fine art but considers himself to be a primarily self taught artist whose most essential technical development was based on the independent study of the paintings of the old masters including Jan Van Eyck and Dominique Ingres among others.

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