Conversations with Anthony Vasquez

Today we’d like to introduce you to Anthony Vasquez.

Hi Anthony, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
I’m from Las Cruces, NM. I come from a large extended family, and when I was growing up, my grandparents and most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins were all very close to each other. We lived in a rural area where my grandfather owned land and farmed it.

From 2000-2005, I attended Adams State University in Southern Colorado to study studio painting. I met my wife there, who was in Colorado for a year as a full-time volunteer. She is Hungarian, and when I first met her, a movie quote came to my mind. When I was in high school, the movie Tombstone came out. One of my favorite characters was Doc Holliday played by Val Kilmer who calls his partner “my sweet soft Hungarian devil.”

Even within the US, I’ve lived in different states and experienced quite a lot of cultural diversity going from New Mexico to Colorado to Michigan to Arizona. My first time in a different country was when I was in 6th or 7th grade. I went to Mexico with my youth group and I remember that it opened my eyes a little bit to the differences in communities between the places we visited and where I lived. Years later, when I was already married, my wife and I traveled to Romania two different times with a college group to help out in a children’s home. It was the first time I was challenged with the question, “How can I as an artist enter into cross-cultural experiences and use my gifts and knowledge as an artist to engage with the people around me? How can I love them, serve them, and offer something new through who I am?” I enjoyed seeing them inspired to create freely.

By 2015, my wife and I had two kids, and I was teaching art in middle school and high school. After a couple of years, it became clear to me that it wasn’t a good fit for me. I was more of a practicing artist rather than a teaching artist. I was looking for something else, and through some strange connections, I heard of a guy in India who was a working artist and running a nonprofit at the same time. His goal and mission was to ask the question and live the answer to how an artist can be truthful in their work while also serving, loving, and engaging their community, especially the marginalized.

My family and I moved to Delhi and I joined this non-profit, helping run local programs. We developed unique, creative workshops for three marginalized groups: at-risk teen girls, maids, and 2 (org supporting at-risk teen girls, Adrienn helped here as well; maids and men in a rehab center. Our organization also held international art residencies involving a mix of Indian and international artists living together for about 3 weeks, partnering with a local organization, and creating works around a central social theme, such as the equality of girls or cultural differences. Connection, mentoring, and learning from each other were important elements here.

I have been a believer in trying to follow Jesus since I was a young man, and it has always been important to me to love and serve those around me. Later on, I started asking what this could look like through my natural gifting as an artist. It was a great opportunity to work in these marginalized communities and integrate into these workshops the idea of God’s creativity, goodness, beauty, and truth that are foundational to my faith.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
When we moved to Delhi, our kids were 5 and 3. It was a big decision to take them away from family and community and out of the context that they knew and dramatically shift our life into a whole other culture. The cultural gap is huge moving from the US to India. It was powerful and wild to experience it all. It was so complex: good, and hard, with some amazing experiences and some difficult challenges. Our kids are more aware of the vastness and diversity of the world. They have a sense of adventure, but they also lack a foundational identity that comes from growing up in one place and one community. When you move, you lose relationships or lose out on a level of closeness, but you also gain new friendships and community. All of our cross-cultural moves highlighted the importance of the nucleus of our family. The 4 of us are home to each other.

One important thing I learned in India is to be careful how I label something different from what I am used to. Often we tend to say that something is either good or bad, but a better way is to first just acknowledge simply that it is different and be curious about it. Another thing I was challenged by was to not enter other cultures as a Westerner with a savior or fix-it mentality. Especially when working with marginalized groups, I need to treat people as equals recognizing their God-given dignity. It is an entirely different heart posture. As a family, we got to experience the gracious hospitality and close friendship of locals, and that was the biggest gift. We were part of a small church community which was a source of refuge and rich relationships for us. It helped us understand the intense city of Delhi and survive the stresses and challenges thereby giving us some roots.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We moved to Budapest, Hungary in 2019, and I started working alongside other artists at Budapest Art Factory. I continued painting, but in 2020, I discovered wood as a new material to work with. For me, painting was always a struggle, even a fight.

I liked this for a long time, as it was a motivation to fight the canvas and make it work, but when I started working with wood, I found freedom, a release of that fight. For the first time, I was connecting my passion for contemporary visual art with my learned skills of craftsmanship. I realized that through this I was able to link my family background to my life as an artist. I grew up with a father and grandfather who were carpenters and learned woodworking skills from them during small childhood. Now I got to connect these skills with a contemporary art approach, which gave me new life. Part of this change was inspired by the creative environment in Budapest.

I feel fortunate to be able to work next to the artists at Budapest Art Factory. Most of them are established local artists who have helped me understand the context, the networks, and the people here. My work with wood is different from most artists in Hungary, but there are some wonderful points of inspiration that I’ve found here. One is the idea of abstract. Going from a figurative painting to constructing abstract wall objects with wood is quite a big jump. Initially, I was just interested in the concepts related to play. I wanted to be free, to explore, and to not be afraid of change. As I started to focus on working with new material, people encouraged me to continue.

On a basic level, I want the audience to experience a sense of awe when approaching my pieces. Because of the 3 dimensionality of my works, the viewer can move within the space and feel them from different angles. There is a visual tactileness – you see the texture, the grains of the wood. Right now, my palette is inspired much by the skies that I remember as a child: the intense sunrises, sunsets, the clear blue days. I am growing to understand what the material of wood can bring to contemporary art. There is a dialogue going on about what is a craft and what is contemporary art, and I like pushing that boundary because for me it connects a lot of people that I know and love, like my father, my grandfathers, and others I worked alongside, to this world of art. The other day I met a guy, a remodeler and contractor, and he said he loved my work because he saw his profession celebrated. To me, this is important and great, because I see the connection.

In my work, a lot of times I start with play. I get some wood, and I explore how I can maintain its integrity, and how I can add to it light and color. There is some planning involved, but the painter in me fights that a little bit. I try to experience the ongoing, evolving process rather than plan out everything in advance. This might change in the future, but right now playfulness is central and I’m just excited to create and see where my growth goes. Wood is still a new material for me as an artist, and there is a lot to learn.

I am represented by Horizont Gallery here in Budapest, and recently a number of my works were purchased by the collection of the Hungarian National Bank.

What were you like growing up?
I’ve always been drawing, ever since I was a kid, whether copying comic books or creating my characters. I majored in art in college and fell in love with painting. It had a lot to do with the freedom I found in painting as well as a professor I had who believed in me. It was in college that I started identifying myself as an artist and decided to pursue it. I felt like it was always going to be a struggle to make a living and find opportunities, but the basic idea of success to me is being able to create every day.

If you can do that then it is a pretty big success. In the beginning, choosing painting was somewhat of a pragmatic idea, because you can set up a canvas anywhere, you can roll it up and move it. I liked the tradition of painting, and I wanted to learn more about it and grow in it. Initially, I had a very expressive, free style of painting, integrating the figure and narration. My early visual influences and inspirations were German expressionists and Mexican muralists. This continued up to 2018-19.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://anthonymvasquez.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthonymvasquez/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anthony.vasquez.12532/

Image Credits
Dávid Bíró and Alida Kovács