Art / Roberto Jamora

:: Three Works ::

From the artist

:: Account ::

Each gra­di­ent is a vignette of an expe­ri­ence or place in my Pass­ing Mem­o­ries series. I attempt to com­mit impor­tant events in my life to mem­o­ry via paint­ing. I mine col­or from mem­o­ry and pho­tos I’ve taken/have been tagged in on social media. Cold wax and oil paint are swiped across the can­vas to con­ceal extra­ne­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties and to lim­it sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. A thin trace of land­scape is revealed. Skin tones, days at the beach, climb­ing a moun­tain with a lover, my par­ents’ back­yard, a city side­walk, the bay­ous in Louisiana where my ances­tors once lived: col­or trig­gers these recollections.

Re: Post­cards from Uncle Rena­to to Lola and Lolo

I am not a reli­gious per­son but feel most spir­i­tu­al when I paint about my fam­i­ly or the Fil­ip­inx dias­po­ra — try­ing to make a con­nec­tion with the past. While mak­ing this piece I tried to con­jure the ances­tors, specif­i­cal­ly my Lola (grand­moth­er), Lolo (grand­fa­ther), and Uncle Rena­to: he was the first of my dad’s sib­lings to immi­grate to the US. I nev­er met him or Lolo because they died sev­er­al years before I was born. In 2010, I was at an artist res­i­den­cy in Que­zon City, Philip­pines and took a trip to my dad’s ances­tral home in Sor­so­gon, Bicol. My cousin Michael found a bag of photos/postcards/letters that my Lola (my grand­moth­er who had passed away in 2005) hid in the fam­i­ly store­house next to sacks of rice. I scanned as many of the pho­tos as I could at the uni­ver­si­ty Michael taught at. I wasn’t sure what I would do with the new­found his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments of my fam­i­ly until recent­ly, but real­ized that these pho­tos are some of my only visu­al con­nec­tions to my family’s past. The gra­di­ents in this work are from Uncle Renato’s post­cards and pho­tos of Lola and Lolo. The lay­er on top is the skin tones from aged pho­tos (hence the pink­ish violet/ochre sepia tones) of my Lola, Lolo, Uncle Rena­to, and my own skin tone.

Rober­to Jamo­ra (b. 1987, Annapo­lis, MD) holds a BFA from Vir­ginia Com­mon­wealth Uni­ver­si­ty and an MFA from Pur­chase Col­lege, State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. He lives and works in Rich­mond, VA and is an Adjunct Pro­fes­sor at VCU School of the Arts. He was award­ed a 2018 Artist Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foun­da­tion for his project “An Inven­to­ry of Traces,” a series of abstract paint­ings inspired by sto­ries of immi­grants in NYC. He has par­tic­i­pat­ed in res­i­den­cies at Joan Mitchell Cen­ter, Rag­dale, and Sam­ba­likhaan. This sum­mer, he will be a Fel­low at Vir­ginia Cen­ter for Cre­ative Arts. His work has been in exhi­bi­tions at Frost Art Muse­um, Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter New Orleans, Topaz Arts, Page Bond Gallery, ADA Gallery, Juice­Box Art Space, Norte Maar, Shock­oe Art­space, Good Enough Projects, Qual­i­ty Gallery, Scott Charmin Gallery, Foula­di Projects, Gay­lord & Dorothy Don­nel­ly Foun­da­tion, Open Space, and Out­let Fine Art.