Artospective: Paintings by Daniel Ochoa from Sonoma County, California.

Concurrido Street.

From the Brush of Artist - Daniel Ochoa. I'm from Sonoma County, California.

I didn't have much ambition to be an artist when growing up in rural California. I enjoyed drawing and building things. In high school I read a lot and would end up in the artist section of the library. I read about Goya, Van Gogh and Dali. The stories of their lives were as compelling as their work. I liked how the images of the artists seemed to tell their life story. I was meant to get a degree in Civil Engineering when I started college - it seemed practical and I did pretty well in math and physics. I switched to studio art because I enjoyed drawing more than calculus. My junior year of college I spent studying abroad in Florence, Italy. I saw a lot of amazing art, but the primary purpose was to get away from a familiar landscape. There was no real plan or path to be an artist. Eventually, I started selling artwork in cafes after college because I could not get a job.

I work primarily with painting and drawing. I don't have to be 'inspired' or 'motivated' to make work. It is pre-programmed, just like eating. Eventually I need to do it.

The experiences I had growing up in a bicultural family fuel the imagery and emotional quality of my work. Over time, I began to recognize cultural dichotomies and to accommodate conflicting viewpoints based on context. With a constantly shifting sense of identity, I explore imagery through my work that is informed by images, emotions, and memory. Painting in layers, I use masking techniques to jumble formal qualities such as abstraction and realistic representation. Recently, I have sourced imagery from Google Street View, the NASA API and social media networks as a way to trace the effect technology has on the construction of images. The combination of divergent elements suggests a pluralistic reality bridging the historical framework of painting, self and the influence of technology on image making.