CARMEN MENZA
Carmen Menza received her BFA in jazz guitar performance from the University of North Texas and is a singer/songwriter, musician and performer. She has always practiced her visual arts, whether in painting or as broadcast graphics designer. She studied privately with artist/painter Liz Richardson for many years and currently works and shows in the greater Texas area.
With an emphasis on spontaneity, Carmen Menza's original works of art capture lifes’ fleeting moments in bold, rich colors and texture. Just as music combines the harmonious and discordant arrangement of sounds, Menza's art concerns itself with the same placement of color and shape. Working primarily in oils, her strong sense of color theory reaches to shape her art on a more visceral level. Guided by formal training and intuition she employs layer after layer of paint to produce abstract expressionistic art that is a riot of texture and color.
She shows her work in group and solo exhibitions and her pieces are held in private collections throughout the North Texas area and beyond.
She has been inspired by artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Jane Frank and Franz Kline.
In addition to being a visual artist, Carmen also received her BFA in jazz guitar performance from the University of North Texas and is a songwriter, musician and performer.
When Carmen isn't painting you can find her improvising with her all original pop rock band.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I create my art because I am passionate about the process and inspired by the extraordinary way a piece of exceptional art can make you stop in your tracks. It’s as if the canvas reaches out and pulls the viewer right into its fibers.
The goal in creating is to, through color, texture and balance, strike an emotional chord on canvas. Like a piece of jazz music, my painting is an improvised art form and has an open-ended architecture that also relies upon the viewers interpretation. I recognize peoples’ autonomy knowing that each viewer will bring a part of their own life experience and interpret a piece differently than the person standing next to them.
The tension and release of positive and negative space, the dissonance and consonance of colors that push and pull, and reaching on a visceral level to make something that speaks is what I attempt in my art. A piece that touches something deeper in us, be it spiritual or emotional.
RESUME
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