Turning Silence Into A Shout

I DON’T JUST PAINT - I conjure. My canvases are portals, trembling with the alchemy of emotion, where abstract expressionism unfurls like a secret whispered in color. As a Dominican artist who calls his work free-spirited, strong, and pure, I wield my brush as if it’s a wand, summoning tempests of feeling that defy the silence of the white expanse.

While I paint, nothing else exists. It makes me feel whole. It is as if painting were the most sublime way to confirm my existence. In my hands, art is no mere craft - it’s a defiant pulse, a proof of life etched in pigment.

I walk a lineage shadowed by titans - Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Willem de Kooning - whose echoes ripple through my work like half-remembered dreams. I have pored over their legacies not to mimic but to distill, sifting their chaos and grit into my own lexicon. Pollock’s wild arcs become my measured storms; Basquiat’s jagged cries soften into my tender defi ance; de Kooning’s fervor bends into my nuanced grace. What emerges is a singular vocabulary, a canvas that hums with love and family - the twin constellations that guide my orbit. These are not just muses but anchors, tethering my abstractions to a heartbeat both intimate and vast.

This tether glowed fiercely as I readied my first major exhibition at the Museo de las Casas Reales in Santo Domingo. I retreated to my maternal grandparents’ summer house in La Piñita, a speck of serenity in Higüey, La Altagracia Province, where the air itself seemed to cradle the memory. There, amid the murmur of a forgotten breeze, I painted as if unearthing voices - my ancestors’ laughter woven into streaks of amber, their strength carved in bold cobalt. The works that graced the museum’s weathered stones were not just art but relics of a reunion, a bridge spanning generations with an elegance that stilled the room.

My gaze stretches beyond the horizon, my art a map redrawn with every border crossed. In October 2024, I claimed a place at the Modern and Contemporary Masters exhibition in New York City, my canvases poised beside the spectral brilliance of Picasso, the reveries of Matisse, the surreal hymns of Miró. In that crucible of creativity, where abstract expressionism once roared awake, I stood not as an echo but a new chord—my work a dialogue with giants, my voice clear amid their chorus.

My odyssey traces an arc of cities, each a stanza in my unfolding song. Miami drank my fervor, its pulse syncing with my own. Madrid framed my innovation in its ancient light. Colombia and Puerto Rico caught my fire, Santo Domingo cradled it as home - a sacred refrain in every showing. Now, Berlin beckons, its restless spirit primed for my arrival later this year, a stage where my hues will clash and meld anew. I don’t merely exhibit; I ignite, each city a mirror refl ecting a facet of my boundless range.

Beneath my strokes lies a rhythm, a thread of Rock and Roll stitched into the fabric of my art. It’s the snarl of a guitar, the kick of a drum - a rebel’s cadence that propels my hand. This isn’t background noise but a collaborator, urging colors to leap, lines to sway. My paintings carry this music’s soul - untamed, urgent, alive - offering not just a sight but a soundscape, a rare fusion that sets them apart. It’s as if I bottled the spirit of a riff and poured it onto linen, a harmony of defi ance and delight.

My art is a rebellion against the mute, a refusal to let feeling fade into shadow. “He paints what we dare not say,” a curator observed after the New York show, “turning silence into a shout.”

My forthcoming Berlin exhibition is less a milestone than a beacon, illuminating a career that gleams with purpose. Yet it’s in the quiet alchemy of my days, the love that steadies me, the family that roots me deep where the canvas is a crucible, transforming the ephemeral into the eternal.

In a world that often dulls the edges of truth, I sharpen them; my art a study in courage and clarity. My paintings are not objects but encounters - invitations to linger in the glow of a mind unafraid to feel, a spirit unafraid to soar. As I chart my course, I off er something exquisite: a vision that marries the raw to the refined, crafting a legacy as unique as the man who dares to dream it.

By Luis Ros

Contributor