I grew up in Miami but I was born in Chiclayo, Peru.

I love the weather. I like the tropical weather and the beaches. I like the Latin culture. It is different from the rest of the United States.

I think a lot of the colors. Especially pink. When you go to Peru, like Machu Picchu and the mountains, you see a lot of the patterns and the clothing the native people wear is hot pink and neon green.

I go visit my family but I have never gone to the tourist places so I am going to go next year.

I have not been to Asia. I want to travel to Japan and China. I want to go all over the world, little by little.

I have been painting since I was in elementary school

My art has always been feminine. I like a little bit of fantasy and whimsical details. Frida Kahlo inspired my work. I love how she is able to express emotions. I think my work is very feminine and it touches people’s emotions. I can express emotion very well. I also love fashion. Patterns and clothing and trends inspire my work, too.

Betsy Johnson is my favorite. I also like Stella McCartney, Michael Kors and Gwen Stefani.

About a year and a half ago. I have a lot of friends that do graffiti. They pushed me to do art on a wall. The first time I did it was at Cushy Gigs. I did a character there. Inside there are a lot of amazing artists, all women artists like Tatiana Suarez. I am very proud this was my first time I did a character. I like that street art brings happiness to the community. That is how I started loving it. I like to give my art to charities and do things that help others.

I think people. I watch people, sometimes my friends. Unconsciously I draw them or myself. When I draw realistically I use my friends as references or people that I like in magazines.

I like La Familia Sagrada in Barcelona, Spain. Antoni Gaudi‘s architecture is just beautiful. It is art. It is like Alice in Wonderland. It is so magical.

(laughs) It is usually about me and how I feel. It comes out in my art. It is very hard to hide it. It comes out without me thinking. Sometimes, if it is for a client, if I am feeling mad or sad, I have to make sure that it doesn’t look like that even though that’s how I feel. I adjust it for a client but when it’s for myself I just let it flow.

The story of Queen Isabella is that when Christopher Columbus was coming to America he came to the King to ask for funds for the trip and she was going to pawn her jewels. That is where the story of the pawn show and Isabella came together. The mural is half finished. They want me to do the whole building so I will add more to the story. In the mural Queen Isabella wants to finance her dreams cause when you go to the pawn shop you can trade something for funds to pay for education or travel or business. Out of her hands jewels will come out and maybe images of dreams and the ship of Christopher Columbus. It will go all around the building.

I did a little mural in New York. I wanted to do another one this summer but I was too busy and I am a teacher so I have to start work in two weeks. Usually, in the summer, I love to travel. I want to travel and paint in California and New York and Puerto Rico.

40 ft

I love to travel. I love culture and people. I went to India two years ago. All the colors and the people were so beautiful. I went to school in Italy. All of that really influenced me.

I definitely want to do installation. I am working on an idea with movies and mural making. Film and installation.

Yes that is something that I loved growing up in the 80s. I love “My Little Pony.” It was just something fun I wanted to try. I did a collection of ponies before for a pop art show. I also did ponies in a mural in the Bird Road Art District. It is fun. Two giant “My little Ponies.”

I have one in Pembroke Pines called “About Face” curated by Jill Slaughter in October. Barbara M De Varona is going to be there, too. It is a group show and it is all about portraits.

I love everything about Miami. The sunshine, the people, my friends. I am semi-native but I consider myself a full native. I have been here since I was five years old. This is the only home I know.

Our productions were very large productions and they were all done in one night. These days graffiti artists have the luxury of mostly doing a lot of work with permission which, I guess, is nice. The quality of the work is still there and it is beautiful work but I do not see the challenges that were presented to us as kids. We worked by street light or by no light and we had eight hours of nighttime to produce our work. Coming back was a risky option which we did not enjoy taking advantage of so we tried to do our pieces all in one night. As far as cutting edge, we came up with different techniques and different looks. They were not cookie cutter bubble letters or whatever everybody else was doing. You could spot a VO5 piece and know that was the VO5 crew that created that production.

20 years after I used to paint on walls I found myself living in a bad economy, came to Wynwood for an art walk, saw what was in the galleries and I told myself as well as my family that I could do this. I had their full support and today I am an artist, going three years strong, loving every minute of it, wish I would have started earlier. I am here now and I am planning on making a mark.

Popeye is more of a nostalgic childhood thing. As a kid, believe it or not, I could never draw that guy. It was one of my challenges. Now that I am older and more years have gone by, I guess, I am more observing, I think I kind of nailed this guy. I would love to reach out to Warner Brothers and see if I could start doing him under contract but for now I am just happy to do him and do him well.

The things that are around me. Things that I see and things that are part of everyday experiences. I bring that into my work.

That style is still in the developing stages. If you look at my earlier work, there is always hints of what used to be and hints on what it is going to be. It is very hard to see my fingerprint if it were not for the texture in my work. My style basically is what I feel at the moment and where the work is taking me. There comes a point in the work where I tell myself to put it done and be done.

There are so many. That’s a funny questions because I do not have any of my work hanging in my house.

If I could own anything I guess it would be Rembrandt’s “Girl with the Broom.” I connect with something about the look of that piece. In that era it was juts a little peasant girl and to see the emotion that he grabs in her face. There are so many angles to that painting you could sit there for hours and always find something interesting about it.

I am thinking of going back more to my abstract world inside my head. With some of the figures making an appearance now and then. I really would like to go even larger than my work now. I am a bit limited by the space I have to work in. I would love to go way larger. I come from a background of walls and to be working on something so small makes you feel confined. I just want to go crazy and blow something up.