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Local artist pays tribute to Hispanic Heritage Month
Bermudez offers paintings with a Pop-Art style
0916SOLOrigoberta
Rigoberta by Stanley Bermudez

Meet the artist

Stanley Bermudez will be on hand from 10:30 a.m. until 11:45 p.m. Saturday at Inman Perk Coffee during the Arts in the Square Festival for a meet and greet.

Stanley Bermudez has been an artist practically all of his life.

"If I start counting since 1985, then you could say I have been an artist for the last 25 years. The reality is that I have been an artist all my life."

Bermudez got in touch with his artistic side in part because of his mother.

"I started making art at a very young age back in Venezuela where I grew up. My mother was an artist and is still an artist, both my sisters studied graphic design and are artist. Art was something that we did all the time, a form of play and entertainment. I just grew up with it."

And now Bermudez is sharing a compilation of work to put others in touch not only with art, but with his Hispanic heritage with a solo show at Inman Perk Coffee on the square.

"One striking characteristic of my paintings is the use of vibrant colors that I believe comes from growing up in Maracaibo, Venezuela and being exposed to the colors of the city, to Venezuelan folk art, to the work of the Guajiro Indians and there tapestries, as well as the work of Venezuelan contemporary masters like Carlos Cruz Diez and the late Jesus Soto."

Bermudez, a Gainesville resident and adjunct instructor at Gainesville State College, said his viewers find his paintings to be dynamic, vibrant, and funny, surrealistic at times, and with a Pop-Art quality to them at others.

"I work with acrylics on canvas using a hard edge approach were I do not blend any colors."

His process he said, is similar to Roy Lichtenstein, but with a very different end result.

Bermudez considers this series a type of installation, where the paintings are "hung side by side touching each other creating a continuous viewing of the images."

"I continue to work on a series called Continuity, also known as the line or stripe series represented on my current solo show at Inman Perk Coffee.

"Continuity is basically a set of contemporary portraits of members of my family, people in American History and Latin American History, and people in popular culture both American and Venezuelan," said Bermudez.