About the Artist

Carmen Lugo is a visual artist who works in mixed media, acrylic, and encaustic. A “mark maker” by nature, Carmen’s work often contains bold lines, scratched and obscured words, and a stream-of-consciousness style of painting. An appreciation of all things fleeting and discarded and gravitation towards evocative color and imagery results in work that often contains themes on impermanence, nature, human nature, and emotion. She equates her process to an “emotional sieve,” sifting through impressions and imagery in the world around her, translating them to canvas.

Carmen currently teaches art classes to teens and children at the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center for Arts and Education, is a member of the South Mississippi Art League, Mississippi Art Colony, and Local Creatives. When not painting Carmen enjoys collecting insects, rearing silk moths, hiking, and being alone in nature. She currently lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast with her husband Vincent, and her two cats Lola and Penny Lane. 

Artist Statement 

I believe that making marks for communication and expression is a most natural, fundamental human instinct. Though I begin a painting with an initial concept, composition, and color palette in mind, I surrender and “feel” my way through the painting spatially, working the canvas as a whole. A layer of paint, ink, or wax may host an assortment of broken objects or ephemera. Vintage papers, broken guitar strings, or ripped fabric are assigned a new life, and purpose. Each brushstroke is a response to the last, creating a series of mini-reactions. This lends a spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness quality to the work while ensuring that each part of the painting is having a “conversation” with the next. Though I am physically creating the painting, the ultimate goal is to let instinct, reaction, and emotion fuel the painting, letting the process dictate the resulting image, down to the final mark.