(pensive music) (wind whistles)
- [Esteban] The way that my paintings develop
is in a very intuitive approach of what I feel,
what I respond to, but also searching for who I am.
Growing up along the border
and not being connected to a lot of my heritage,
I have had to find it on my own.
The process of art as being like a healing gesture
of connecting to these histories,
but then also reconnecting my relationship back to the land
and to learning these histories before we lose them to time.
(clock ticks) (pensive music continues)
(wind whistles)
(water trickles)
The way my process works is based on the concept
of a tesseract, where you have four different layers
or four different dimensions inside of it.
First, I start out by dyeing the canvas with cochineal.
Cochineal dye operates as almost like an astral plane
that looks similar to the way physicists map space.
These spiral forms in my paintings are about solstices.
Indigenous societies had the capability
of modeling time without industrial technology,
and then building up the next image
where I'm thinking about pre-colonial histories
and what advanced structures predate 1492.
The third layer involves observational painting
that I do on site.
- Yeah, that's looking pretty good.
- [Esteban] Heidi's been my partner for 10 years.
I'm asking for feedback,
but I'm also giving support where I can
with Heidi's process.
The fourth layer that I do is thinking about
a post-colonial future where it's optimistic and healing.
These layers don't sit parallel to one another
because there are multiple dimensions that are existing
alongside of all of us.
Painting is that device that can defy time.
(clock ticks)
What I want my viewer to experience is this paradox
where you can go backwards in time.
(wind rushes)
I think the land speaks to you when you're looking at it.
(cicadas chirruping)
Why I continue to go back to New Mexico
is to reconnect with my past.
My father's family was from New Mexico,
and my mom's from San Ysidro, California,
but born in Tijuana.
I can't really explain how much spiritual freedom
I sense when I'm there.
I go outdoor painting, doing plein-air painting,
and in some ways it's about endurance.
You go out to a specific site with a certain intention
but then nature guides you.
Time is shifting also.
Not only am I kind of building these multiple dimensions,
I'm also literally chasing after light.
(footsteps crunch)
(birds chirp)
(clock ticks) (gentle music)
Landscape painting for me, feels like
what all of our ancestors used to do in the caves.
That's where we all began thinking about space
but not severing it.
Colonial era painting came into the United States
with the project of showing how nature needs to be tamed
and all the savages need to be converted
and turned into men.
What I'm trying to do with my work is deconstruct
what we're seeing.
Who used to live there, who still lives there.
How do I utilize the language of painting to expand
our vision of where we could think about space and time.
Landscape painting can start two dimensionally
but I think it could also expand out into a whole worldview
to treat people in more equitable ways.
(subway announcer speaks) (gentle orchestral music)
(train clacks)
(clock ticks)
It's crazy how much more fencing
they kind of put up around here
since we last were here, Mom? - Oh yeah.
We used to consider this a place where you could
just like, really run around
and especially when you're kids.
I would have never expected
that what I took as natural and day-to-day, would change.
- [Esteban] It's weird to just be here and making it
an image that we've seen so much in mass media.
What can I say about it that isn't just
like something that's trying to define us?
- I think the privilege of having lived
a long life is that you know that that is not permanent.
- Yeah.
- That at some point that fence is going to go down,
but I have to bring back a memory of this space
without the fences because otherwise I go crazy.
You know, it's just really hard.
It's just really hard
to see the fences. - Yeah, (sniffs)
thank you for sharing that, Mom.
We have to express it though too,
in order to get past it and imagine
something bigger than it.
(gentle music) (clock ticks)
- We never knew if they were coming for coffee.
(speaks in Spanish) - Or spending the night.
- Spending the night or- - Some of the core themes
of my work are about freedom.
(pensive music)
Freedom to really express yourself
and your relationship to space and the environment.
Justice, how can you do justice to the past?
And I think, also joy.
(gentle piano music continues)
I didn't start speaking till I was five
so painting was that way for me to communicate
with other people.
I didn't have to explain myself.
Painting has always been that method to go backwards
in time into that mode of the five-year-old,
where I'm just feeling.
There's no words for it.