Art by Adriana Santiago

“The human unit of time,” Margaret Mead once wrote, “is the space between a grandfather's memories of his own childhood and a grandson's knowledge of these memories as he heard about them.” Creating art is a healing and a nurturing process for me. The majority of my life has been lived in the United States, but sustaining a cultural link to my birth nation, Cuba, has been the underlying pulse of the art I have created. Through my paintings, I maintain a strong bond with my family which in turn creates a mythology that enables me to understand my history and preserve our immortality.

The artwork has a life of its own. My work is shaped by both the personal and the archetypal determinants from the unconscious self, working often from primitive impulse towards a more final form. I work with mixed media, such as wax, resin, oil paints and computer generated images assembled in collage form into the paintings to broaden and intensify the language of my creative work. The feel of oil paints and the physicality of painting are central to the images that evolve. The forms revealed in these images are often symbolic. The universality of certain themes and symbols lays a foundation for relating universal aspects of the human experience, and at the same time maintaining their personal interpretation.

Using multi-media technologies has broadened my work. I spent to many years working on my original web site: santiagodecuba.com and thinking about the meaning of the Cuban revolution as many others will for many decades to come.  And now on this site, adrianasantiago.art, I will resume the documentation of my creative jounery. My work helps me to engage family, fellow artist and students to construct personal stories, which are grounded in the creation of meaningful artifacts. In this way, we are actively constructing new knowledge and preserving it for the next generation.