Interview

Apr 9

Arides R. Pichardo

Arides is a Dominican artist residing in Providence, Rhode Island, USA and a native of Sabana de la Mar known as “Bay’s Bride - Home of The Haitises” Dominican Republic. Since early childhood, he demonstrated artistic talents in Model Construction, Sculpture, and an ample imagination. He began to cultivate his innate gift since the tender age of 7, when he would draw on all of his notebooks, make houses out of cardboard, and create animal sculptures out of mud in his grandmother’s yard. At age 13, he possessed a tenacious ability in exterior publicity (murals, signs, etc.) as well as t-shirt art, Panoramas and Store Fronts typical of his country. He developed all of his abilities by observing his environment without the benefit of an art professor, or even an art book.

AFA Composition XII-Pichardo,Arides2011.jpg

What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?

“In 1991, I immigrated to my countries’ capital to master my artistic talent and attended the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Primada de América, where I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in Publicity, with a major in Graphic Design and Illustration received the high honor with a ‘Cum Laude.’ While there, I received instruction from famous artists such as: Gabino Constanza Rosario, Francisco Mata Lima, Amable Sterling, Eric Genao, Felix Manuel Traboux, Ciprián Mordán, Luis Antonio Rodríguez (RIP), Luis José, Antonio Rodríguez (RIP) and many others. From my first year in college through the end of 2003, I was employed in Printing and Publicity firms as a Graphic Designer and Illustrator. In 2003, I decided to immigrate to the United States of America in hopes of a greater professional and personal future. I moved to Providence, Rhode Island, USA., where I assisted in the creation of Vision Moderna Magazine, Restoration of old photographs, Logo designs and commissioned paintings. Since 2005, I have dedicated most of my time to my individual and group fine art shows obtaining awards, numerous recognitions, and invitations to Local and International art galleries as an exhibitor as well as an artistic speaker.”

What inspires you?

“Curiosity, nature, cinema, natural or man-made disasters, imagination, the non-everyday or the non-preestablished. Reading.”

What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?

“In every completed work, there exists an intrinsic message, a scream, a lesson, a rupture, and a new universe to explore.”

AFA Speak for Itself-Pichardo,Arides2011.JPG

How would you describe your work?

“Expressión, Creativo, Contemporaneo, no representacion de lo clasico.”

Which artists influence you most?

“Rembrant, Dali, Pikas, Kandiski, Amable Sterling, Goya.”

AFA Fish Retailer Pichardo, Arides 2024.jpg

What is your creative process like?

“Deeply rooted in the mental and the imaginative. Exploratory and contemporary. Reinventive, featuring strange contrasts. A compilation of images and their communicative interrelationship—often devoid of the figurative elements of everyday life.”

What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?

“The role of an artist in society is communicative—critical of the abusive and the improper. It is emotional and constructive... Mentally and physically medicinal. It is, in its entirety, a cry of creativity, uniquely tailored to a specific community or social entity; a lasting imprint upon history and the surrounding society—an encyclopedia waiting to be discovered through the passage of time, and a future consecrated within the realm of art. All art has a central idea that usually it’s intrinsic or it specifies, conceived from before plazmar itself with the necessary elements selected by the artist. This, in its imaginative world the result of its work resorts to elements plastic in its eagerness to communicate a feeling of in determine nature. Will economically happen to be a distinguished masterpiece that immediately each receiver valorized sentimental and. Even so, it does not let fulfill its assignment, the intention by which it was conceived and it executed, this could be very diverse since it will depend on the cognitive wealth of each receiver. Catapulted to the fame this work already will be perceived like a set, a world in which you are educated, it delights and you decorate a restricted space. The gift of contemplation in the human being, of self-reflexion, creativity and application of the intellect; they extend to the conceptualization on the basis of philosophical knowledge; although often they can be concretize from absent worlds. This virtue to identify, to question, coherence or contradiction; based on the ‘Eidón’ of the particular premises of an artist visual and reflected by an artistic spectator; it is where both cognitive and philosophical worlds interact. That world rationalized or empirical of sensations and reflections is what provides the general universe of the work in him and its origin.”