...that's me and Mini Me.

I was born in Cuba, but was raised in Miami, Florida since the age of 10 when I immigrated to the United States. Miami has been my hometown since, except for the 6 years that I attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, where I graduated in 1977 with a Master of Architecture. Though I have worked in several local architecture and engineering firms, my career path was in academia. For 35 years, I was a full-time professor of architecture until my recent retirement.

When I started college, I studied the principles of aesthetics through painting, ceramics and sculpture. This journey led to the awareness that my passion for the plastic arts was as strong as my interest between the exterior and interior of three-dimensional objects. I decided to explore architecture which is a mixture of these two interests in large scale with a mechanical component. Soon, I discovered an explosion of challenges and creative directions that have forever captivated my attention.

Parallel with my academic development in architecture, I continued to produce art pieces. My work became heavily influenced by the rational creative structure characteristic of many designers with architectural backgrounds. In earlier years, I had worked briefly with the design trade in contract furniture sales where I met an art dealer from Venezuela that supplied original artwork for architecture/interior design firms serving the hospitality industry. Every piece that I produced from this period through 1987 was channeled through this contact. In mid 1987, my son was born severely premature and I had to focus my attention on family and work. Soon thereafter, my wife was diagnosed with a rare illness which eventually took her life 20 years later. This difficult and challenging period left little time to develop my art and culminated with the loss of my wife and best friend. After her death and my son’s departure to college, I went back to the canvas in an attempt to rekindle my passion and began experimenting with my art form from a different perspective. I have since married an incredible woman whom I credit with renewing my soul and re-energizing my creativity.

The art pieces exhibited in my gallery are the result of this effort which started in 2012. My work is not intended to carry any kind of message. The pieces in the collection are compositions that try to capture the viewer’s attention through a combination of bold forms, contrasting textures and colors. Teaching architecture has given me the opportunity to understand and to evaluate how people perceive and/or apply the principles and values of aesthetics in design. This knowledge guides my work as an expressionistic artist.