Minerva Ortiz

Artist statement: "Being a Mexican-American has made me aware that cultural differences create conflict—while they also work together to create richer experiences and opportunities. Through my paintings I want to address the multiple sides of multi-culturalism; from the confusion, ambiguity, and uncertainty that come from trying to understand and tolerate multiple viewpoints, to the rich experiences and possibilities that diversity creates.   
By using dichotomies such as: wet/dry, wild/domestic, raw/refined, fantasy/reality, inside/outside, sacred/profane, threatening/subdued, I want to create works that are complex, unstable, and perplexing; and for those same reasons, very rich.   
In the latest body of work, I’ve tried to make tangible my sense that life is complex because it is motivated by the shifting relationships between complimentary and contradictory forces. Depending on how one sees it—and this changes for me constantly—relativity can be extremely liberating and/or terrifying. Because of this, I now deeply believe in the guiding force of intuition."

See some more of Minerva's artwork