Cuban art by Dixie Miguez

Image:

Self Portrait 18"x24" Oil on Canvas, 1995

A R T I S T B I O G R A P H Y

My name is Dixie Miguez. I was born in 1969 in San Juan de los Remedios, a small town in Central Cuba. It was there in my home town where I attend to my first art classes at the "Casa de la Cultura" to learn de basic skills of fine art.

I was raised in a family of painters. As a child, I watched my grandfather paint scenes and landscapes of my town as well as murals and political billboards. I also enjoyed and learn from the arts and crafts my mother made out of local primitives materials.

Since I was a child, I have been fascinated with applying art to convey the essence of every day life. In 1987, I was invited to study commercial design at the Advanced Institute of Design (ISDI) in Havana, Cuba and 5 years later I graduated. With my diploma in hand and a thousand ideas in my mind, I returned to my native province of "Villa Clara" and began to work as Director of the Regional Center of Design. It did not took too long for me to realize that Graphic Art in a country without marketing or products was useless and I had to abandon my position to become a self represented artist.

A month after my second art exhibition, the government of Cuba opened up the coast and my wife Miriam and I left in a raft for the United States in search of freedom.

Original artworks for Padrino's Bristo, Orlando, FL

My artworks are typically done with oil colors on stretched canvas and represent the every day life of the country side and small towns of central Cuba. The art represents my childhood in San Juan de los Remedios, a small town in Villa Clara and the experiences and events archived in my mind through the years I lived in Cuba.

The subjects and themes may vary but the essence of my art is the same �Cuba in a context of surrealism�. On the paintings I represent scenes of the every day life in my hometown surrounded by the local culture and architectural elements from a surrealism point of view.

The visual characteristics of my art are represented by the use of human bodies with no faces, no arms and disconnected hands. The color palette used is very intense and warm representing the colors of the Cuban tropic such as warm red, cadmium yellow, forest green and dark brown. The use of no face and no arms was born in Cuba; it was a way for me to express the lack of freedom of expression in our country. A face with out mouth can�t speak and without eyes can�t see.

With the time it became the key of my surrealism style and now I see it in an opposite way, now it represents an unlimited freedom. I would like that in those empty faces the viewer put their on face or the ones they would like to see on it. The absence of arms represent unlimited freedom as well, can you image your hands been free, controlled but not physically connected to your body... how many things you can touch and feel, even if your body is not there!