 Can you tell me what your name is and what you do? Am I looking here? Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, look at me. Yeah, okay My name is Nigo Mandoia If I were to talk about my art, I mean where I would probably start is It's just the love of the process I love I love to draw and I love to I love to make pictures and I've done it in a lot of different ways This is a new way. This is a way that seems to be sticking and I really really love it And it seems like there's a lot of room to grow in this direction, and I'm just excited to explore it. I was a digital artist for many years and so what I what I do is I'll take things into Photoshop and You know and mock up something like you know something like this Which is obviously very very rough and unfinished But I'll take that and it's just a it's just a loose map to put on here And then I start to build on top of that and a lot of this a lot of the stuff that happens on top of that is just You know instinct or artistic license I've always been a little bit of a process junkie maybe maybe a little bit to my detriment You know, but with this it's all about you know, it's all it's all processed So every time I pour a new layer, I'll take a picture And then I'll prep it and put it on here now I can't see on here necessarily what's underneath so I'll take that picture of the clear Layer put it in Photoshop and sort of try to figure out what the next move is going to be for me on any particular piece So this has a few layers underneath and what I do is I sand this down And this is a pretty rough a rough surface, but on on this you can actually get it's like it's like drawing on paper You get really nice line quality. The problem that I discovered is you can't see Anything underneath and I found this transfer paper. So if things get too opaque I'll actually put that back on and I'll take something like this Put the transfer paper underneath and then transfer the drawing back on and what you can't see actually under here Is that there's there's other portraits and when it gets revealed? You know when you pour the the next layer on it all gets revealed And it's it's this really interesting process too because because I'll work and I'll work and I'll work Okay, I think we're in a good place and then I'll pour the resin on and go now this needs okay That's when I started realizing that I needed more and more layers And then it just became this process of finding ways to have these layers interact with each other and different kinds of brushstrokes and different kinds of effects Different kinds of materials using pencil and different kinds of paint oil and acrylic and gold leaf lots of gold leaf It's not a roadmap, you know, it's not it's not a set path It's not like okay Google Maps telling how to get to the end of the painting, you know It just doesn't work that way I think that's I think it's how you evolve as an artist is that you is that you learn how to make the most out of your Accidents if you don't then you're just doing the same thing kind of over and over again And if you're not willing to make accidents, then you're not willing to grow What's so exciting for me about the resin work is that in doing it with these layers is That the process shows in the finished work I mean you literally see each step of the process as you went along you can't necessarily see it in Full technicolor, but you can see the layers and you can see as I went along what I was doing I mean, that's a little bit of a fairy tale like you know, yes You know I am making this work for myself Certainly, I'm a working artist and like I hope and want people to like the work and to buy the work Because that's essential for me to make more of the work But it is it is it is a very fulfilling process for me to sit here and to come up with ideas and things That I want to say on the on the canvas You know, it's interesting that as I think we all make our work We go through different periods in our lives where we have more or less time more or less space to make these things I think that when I'm making my best work it's when I Have somehow freed myself of these other constraints if I can give myself Permission because it's not even about necessarily finding time because we can all find time I mean I met a guy last week who made work in prison while he was literally fighting for his life So we can all make time. It's about giving ourselves. I think permission And over the past couple of years. I've gotten better and better at giving myself Kind of permission to say it's okay to be doing this. It's okay to be an artist It's okay to to make this work and have this be your life because it feels like a luxury In a lot of ways even though it's hard and it's a struggle And you don't make the money that you want to be making in all of these things But to give yourself the permission to do this thing that brings you so much joy and to believe that it brings other people Joy whether or not that belief is founded. I think that's the key is that permission that you give yourself I think just in all of this the thing the thing that I'm I'm very very grateful for is You know my friends in my community and the people who? See me at my worst the people That guy like as an artist we're bearing our souls right and that takes practice You don't just do that in a vacuum I mean kids do it and then you forget because society is like you should look this way and do that this way But I think if we have that community of trusted friends or even just just one trusted friend Who you know you can be your most vulnerable your ugliest your worst self and your best self If you have that person that you can literally expose everything to that's what you need to be an artist