Background
Oscar Castillo – Artist Narrative: As a youth my parents influenced me
in that my mother kept a family photo album, which I keep now, in which our
family photos and memories were kept. These were not just snapshots, but now I
can see that they are well composed as well as tell a story by the choice of
locations as well as depicting different people. My photography carries on my
early memories of community, family and a sense of place, although I have chosen
to look at a much larger extended family and community. Since I'm of Hispanic
and Native American heritage, my work is very influenced and reflects these
backgrounds while at the same time make a universal statement. As a multi
discipline artist I work in different media such as drawing, painting, stained
glass, ceramics, and mixed media, but with a main emphasis on photography as
art. While in Japan, during the mid 1960's, I was very influenced by the
cultural and environmental beauty of that country and I began a serious study of
photography to document my experiences while there. This fascination with
cultural, social and political documentation has continued to this day with my
personal and artist photography reflecting my sense of community. In the late
1960's I enrolled in college with a dual major of Sociology and Fine Art. In the
more than 30 years that I have been producing art images, there are cycles of
recurring themes and a metamorphism of images and ideas. Some pieces are
stand-alone images, while in others I combined photos into juxtaposed or
organically combined collages. While some of my photos are also photo
journalistic others are painterly. I work in traditional dark room printing as
well as digitally created and manipulated and printed photography. Artist
statement courtesy of Oscar Castillo
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