EL MESTIZO is the result of years of personal contemplation and introspection. When you are half one ethnicity and half another (in my case, Mexican-American) you may grow up confused as to which side you are "supposed" to live out. You get embraced or ostracized on either side, you either pick one or try to go from one to another. So what do you do if you don't fit in either way you go? Where's the balance? Where is your place in the grand scheme of things? How do you fuse the two together and become one? I found the answer in MESTIZO.

In it's simplest definition, which is the one I choose to use here, mestizo means "mixed" or "mixture" in spanish. Capitalize it and you have what I consider a unifying term free of any negative connotations that may stem from being half one thing and half another.

There is a phrase, borrowed from Buddhist logic, that I think best explains the idea behind this theme: Not two, and not One, but both Two and One. Mestizo allows me to finally express pride and criticism of either side. It gives me a place where none of this shit about "purity" matters. It allows me the freedom to enjoy that "best of both worlds" that I've often been told I have by being mixed. It allows me to create some fucking kick-ass art, and I get to do it by mixing up both the pop culture and historical iconography of both Mexico and America in a palette of pinks and browns.

This first show will only scratch the surface of what is in store for my own little personal journey. It is my hope that you stop by to see it.

About the Artist:
Martin Ontiveros grew up in San Diego, California, hated it, left there at 22 for CalArts, "studied" Experimental Animation, slacking, and other alternative states of mind, left CalArts at 26 with a Bachelor's degree that is probably as equal in worth as the paper they printed it on. Then he moved here in Portland, OR to be with his best gal.

His many many years of pop culture emersion and empirical knowledge of useless trivial information have somehow paid off in spades. Call it luck. He's not famous, folks, but dammit he actually makes a decent living drawing and painting weird stuff. He has a nice girlfriend, a cool son named Felix, two cats, his own house (and mortgage), a beat up Mazda MPV minivan, and a very messy studio. It can only go up from here.

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