Art & Life with Leonel Robles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Leonel Robles.

Leonel, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I’m the first child of my parents who are immigrants. From a very early age, I grew up in poverty seeing the many struggles and challenges it brings to families. At the same time, I saw both of my parents work ethic especially my dad when he was in construction. He began to have success and even made his own construction company, but it all came crashing down when he got deported. This is where my mother had to provide for me and my younger sister on her own, and I saw first hand what a truly strong independent woman looked like. Around this time I was in 3rd grade, and I had begun to get bullied at school, but I never brought it up to teachers or my mom because I didn’t want to give her another thing to stress about. Of course, with all this, I developed my depression at an early age, but I always had one thing to fall back on, and that was my drawings. Thats really how everything started for me and as I began to go into high school, I learned new media and even more ways to express my creativity. My mom always called my creativity a gift from God and that it should be something I should pursue and own. My teachers had always given me similar words and motivation, I still have many of my old teachers asking about me and know that ima do special things in the art world and honestly its a blessing, at the time Im pretty sure I seemed nonchalant about it but looking back they’re kindness and words of motivation it still drives me till this day. Im 21 now, and even then I still don’t know what to call myself really, a photographer, a drawer or painter, a graphic designer, a producer? I wanna do everything with no limits and bounds, and I feel like this is the road ima take going forward not letting a single medium define me.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
Like I said earlier, I started off by drawing and I would draw so much surrealism, and even today I still feel like that also reflects in my photography. Surrealism was explained to me early on as anything that was dreamlike, something that couldn’t possibly exist in this reality. I took this and ran with it, escaping the reality I was surrounded by and drew my own reality. Along with this, another big inspiration is ironically my depression, I can draw or paint on canvas to show you what I’m feeling. I can take photographs to show you what I see through my own eyes. I can make a song or write a poem, so you can hear or and feel what I feel. My creativity has always had this complicated relationship with my depression; I feel like my art is a huge outlet that makes me feel better when my anxiety/depression is knocking but at the same time its the thing that’s fueling my creativity. Kinda funny how it works really but I do feel like everything I do has a purpose or a message in it. Mostly its what emotion I was feeling in that very moment, and it’s up to the viewer to interpret what it means. When it comes to my photography, it’s along the same lines, but I often let the caption give a little more insight on what they mean and the captions will sometimes also be references to songs, video games, movies that I’ve enjoyed in my childhood. Lastly, I think what I want people to take away from my work no matter what it is, is to look at and know they’re not just looking at a painting or photograph. They’re looking at a diary entry, A checkpoint if you will that marks this long road that I’ve been on since my birth. I want kids to know I drew this picture when I was twelve or nine. I wrote this and took pictures of that when I was in high school. I wanna show them they’re not alone and that someone before them has experienced or felt as sad as they have. I want people to look at my work whether its a sad piece or happy one, I want them to say wow. That’s beautiful. Because that’s what our emotions are at the end of the day, they’re a giant canvas full of different colors.

How do you think about success, as an artist, and what do quality do you feel is most helpful?
Success to me is when people compliment my work first and foremost, the most important thing is to just keep working, and the rest will come, but until then people complementing my work is all I need and its a feeling that’ll never get old for me. As for essential characteristics I feel like being humble and being open to criticism is important. Also asking questions and that desire to learn and soak up as much knowledge as you can. If you have the opportunity to ask someone who’s more experienced than you go for it, don’t be afraid of failure, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Learn from those artists that have come before you and be inspired by their work and strive to make your own lane.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I mostly post all my work on my Instagram, But I have been working on a website and will start merchandise later on in the year. Ive also just made a twitter. For the time being though Instagram is the best place to see my work and please don’t hesitate to follow and like or leave a message, all constructive criticism and advice are welcomed!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://convictphx.com
• Email: Davincix98photography@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/da_vincix98/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/?lang=en

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