Barrios: A Journey from My Front Door to a Global Understanding

Part I — Germination

This journey began close to home. As a young artist studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, I painted what was nearest — the view outside my window. Those early works formed a quiet beginning, a foundation that would eventually widen my way of seeing beyond what I could imagine at the time.

Part II — The View from Above

Motherhood brought me to an apartment twelve stories above Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood — a dense rhythm of row houses and repeating blocks. From above, pattern and proximity began to shape my work. The city revealed itself as structure, movement, and community, influencing the paintings that followed.

Part III — The Seeds Burst Forth

Later, in the suburbs, those early impressions expanded. The focus shifted from houses and blocks to entire neighborhoods, and then to cities themselves. The paintings grew wider in scale, following a vision that had quietly taken root years before.

Part IV — Barrios

During the pandemic, and through the unexpected doorway of Pinterest, I encountered images of barrios from around the world. I was struck by their familiarity — as if they mirrored work I had already been painting. These images became a catalyst, opening the way to larger works and a broader understanding of place.

Part V — Toward a Global Understanding

What emerged was a merging of the imagined places I had long painted with the realities of the wider world. Many of these neighborhoods, often marked by poverty, are nevertheless vivid expressions of the human condition. Their similarities across continents are not accidental; they reveal how dense urban environments shape communities when resources are limited. That my work converges with these real places feels less like coincidence and more like recognition.

These images inspire me because they embody living places — kinetic, layered, and alive. My work seeks to convey the energy of place as a living entity, constantly growing and adapting. Cities expand where space no longer exists, stumbling outward and redefining themselves in the process.

And yet, as in the case of Fairmount, density does not necessarily create hardship. The closeness of people can also produce belonging — neighborhoods that become barrios in the truest sense: places of pride, places of meeting, places called home.