Photo by: Carolina Yáñez
Karina Ramirez is a mixed-media artist exploring color and how color can express certain aspects of a composition. Her work consists of a combination of abstract and representational imagery. Her artwork covers ideas of Space: Place, identity, culture, belonging, and self-expression—using color through lines, shape forms, and texture. A significant part of her work is the process. Her work consists of memories she made with her family heritage as a Mexican American. She has been exploring new ways to enhance her progress by exploring various inner cultural documentation when visiting her family in Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Texas with photographic notation and video. Karina received her B.F.A in Painting/Drawing and a Minor in Art History from the University of North Texas (2024) and is currently an MFA 26' candidate at Southern Methodist University, Meadows School of the Arts. Her work has been in numerous exhibitions, including the Dallas Museum of Art for Young Masters exhibition (2017). She was also awarded a scholarship in the 62nd Annual Paul Voertman Juried Student Art Competition at the University of North Texas (2023).
My Approach
My artistic practice involves finding familiar ties to locations and seeking my kinship with the land and people around me. These ties closely relate to my Identity, culture, religion, and belonging. My work reflects my time living in and visiting family in Los Angeles, USA, Texas, USA, and San Juan del Rio Municipality, Durango, Mexico. I come from a family of vaqueros who have depended on cultivating the land from cattle raising and harvesting for generations in Mexico. This interest in the bonds created through family ties and cultural practices that reflect differently between urban and rural ranchero life is explored in these works. A location is just a place in time; memories are made to have a sense of belonging.
I process stories and memorable events through my journey from my memories in distinct places I call home, exploring different media and concepts through various ways of applying paint to create layers. This layering of mixed media is created through acrylic paint, watercolor, soft pastel, ink, and oil paint. Photographic references help generate a composition and a way of documenting these recollections. The layering is incorporated to explore the layers of the past and present. Manipulating and distorting past moments with painting allows the creation of dictions from memory and incorporates imagination. This exploration has taught me how to create pigments from the land—creating glazes retrieved from my backyard, rocks from my family ranch in Mexico, and dirt from my grandparent's backyard in Los Angeles. In this ongoing experiment and study on creating a unique tie to the land, I find it more interesting to understand how to create these pigments rather than the overall outcome. It's a form of communication that occurs when gathering clay, dirt, and rocks, and it explains how the material can be shaped and reimagined. As I continue developing my practice connection to places where I have family roots and memories, I aim to express a sense of home in my work. The more I seek , the more I realized that home is not a fixed location but a feeling shaped by memories, family, culture, and the land around me.
San Juan del Rio Municipality, Durango, Mexico
Plano, Texas
Los Angeles, California