About the Artist

Born in Colombia, Mario had been painting in New Orleans for five years until he was displaced by Hurricane Katrina. He then completed a Masters of Fine Arts at the prestigious New York Academy of Art in Tribeca, Manhattan (2008). After a six-month escape to Colombia after graduation where he taught an advanced course in Aesthetics in the Philosophy Department of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (his alma mater), he is now finally back in New Orleans with his own Studio/Gallery on the popular Magazine Street in uptown New Orleans.

Although Mario has been painting all his life, he graduated from the Universidad Nacional of Colombia in Bogota with a degree in Philosophy and later was a professor of Greek and Philosophy at a nearby university. Enthralled from Plato to Nietzsche, Mario still remains a philosopher as it pushes him deeper into his colors, perspectives, nostalgic compositions, and inspirations.

In his current series, "1001 Faces of America Latina," the subjects are mostly inspired by his different travels to Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and throughout Colombia, journeys that he has made throughout his life, where he collects images, sketches, and ideas that he translates to canvas. Being a Latin American himself and a consistent critic of the common representation of that world, Mario tries with this collection to express the diversity of feelings that his soul needs to unveil, using images of cockfights, music, and social relations (to name a few) to express his personal philosophies. These representations are made with additional varieties of textures, transformations of conventional forms, and warm colors. Mario studies and understands the relationship between the human being in Latin America and his relationship with the land, and tries to express this in a third possible reality on canvas. In the end, Mario continually aims to show to the world a new and original possible representation of Latin America, one that expresses all of the problems and happiness of the Andes, amazons and Central America. Mario tries to bring that America to this America, exposing a different world to his viewers.