Artist Statement
My work exists in the space between emotion and structure, between what’s seen and what’s sensed. Each painting is a moment of rupture or reflection—confrontations, memories, spiritual tension—channeled through color, line, and movement.
I draw from the world as it unfolds: fractured streets, tense silences, fleeting glances, imagined places, raw figures, and surreal visions caught between memory and dream. Human forms appear often, but never alone—always surrounded by the quiet presence of landscapes, animals, patterns, or symbolic fragments that linger and disappear.
My process is intuitive but intentional. I approach the canvas not as a surface to decorate, but as a field where truth and instinct collide. I don’t chase perfection—I chase intensity. I paint with the urgency of someone who understands that each work might be the last.
Influenced by classical tradition yet unapologetically contemporary, I bend visual languages to speak more freely—allowing abstraction, figuration, and geometry to coexist without hierarchy. My practice is rooted in storytelling, vulnerability, and transformation.
I make art that aims to be felt more than explained. If it resonates, it’s because it touches something deeper—something beneath the noise.
Biography
Carlos Buitrago is a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist whose work fuses expressive figuration, abstraction, and cultural memory into bold, emotionally charged compositions. His paintings are not only visual statements—they are dialogues between silence and confrontation, control and surrender, past and present.
Carlos began his artistic journey at Otis College of Art and Design, where he developed a foundation rooted in experimentation and emotional depth. In 2006, he apprenticed with master artist Anatole Krasnyansky—an experience that reshaped his approach and sharpened his ability to blend structure with spontaneity.
His practice evolved through years of observation, travel, and relentless work in the studio. Drawing influence from Latin American visual traditions, the raw energy of Abstract Expressionism, and the layered visual language of urban art, Buitrago’s style continues to shift—never static, always in motion.
Since 2016, his work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, New York, London, Tokyo, and Miami. Recent highlights include Wanderlust Trails (Los Angeles) and participation in the 24th Japan International Art Exchange Exhibition – The USA Exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Through his work, Carlos seeks to create a space where intensity, vulnerability, and mystery intersect. Every painting is a reckoning with the self, an offering to the viewer, and a challenge to stay present in a fractured world.