“I’ve been drawing since I was a kid, but I don’t think I started painting until maybe high school. I’ve really fallen in love with it as a medium in the three years that I’ve been here. I love how flexible it is. You can move it around; you can wipe it off days later. It’s just so loose and expressionistic. It’s a fun experience every time I paint because I can’t really see where it’s going to end up until it’s over.

Before I started college, I was an amateur at creating art. I was just doing it for fun. But now, I am much more technically skilled and I know the vocabulary for the fine arts field. Conceptually speaking now, whenever I make artwork, I am never doing it just because. I am asking, ‘What is this saying because I’m doing it in this way?’ Or, if I choose to paint something instead of choosing to draw it, how do the different visual qualities help me achieve what I want it to achieve?

This intentionally adds a new depth of expression to the art I am creating. It’s about how I can communicate with different communities. You can acquire that same vocabulary and skill of articulating through artwork on your own. But in an academic setting, there are unique experiences that help you understand different things. For example, how did these people in the Renaissance explain this type of concept and how can you apply those same metaphors in your current work? I don’t know that the average person could get that without a formal education. 

In the future, I’m hoping to use art to share my thoughts about community and things like that because I feel like I don’t express myself as well verbally as I do through my artwork. I want to communicate with the community in a different way and bring people together. One of my all-time goals is to have my own gallery so I can curate my own shows and work internationally with different artists.”

— Diego Albert Torres, senior, Department of Art & Art History