Raul Santos / Smoke II fire

artist info /

raul santos, is a cuban american artist born and raised in miami,fl. santos’ started his obsession to create as a street artist, who in his development, took to a more complex and extended use of lettering and automatic writing. a further evolution moved these letters into abstraction as an intricate series of attenuated lines, often demarcated by vivid colors and bold contrast.

the act of identifying one’s territory is not lost in this progression, as the deliberate use of vibrant colors reflects on the artist’s sense of nativism with a city visually punctuated by neon signs, club lights, and brilliant skies. as with automatic writing, he continues to engage in transitive states where intense color field variations indicate depths explored within the scope of creation. 

santos’ current work naturally progresses, incorporating line work as a base metaphor that connects places, spaces, and frames of mind. transitions between meditative, ecstatic, and psychedelic states occur through the simple act of moving along lines and through the fields between them. these lines become pathways in disparate topographies, mapping the artist’s experience for the observer to follow.