Edgar Bustillos

Painter draws on past experiences from travel, sports and politics

Comments (0) By Troy Schulze Thursday, Sep 20 2007

The elastic paintings of Edgar Bustillos are pulled taut with the experiences of a lifetime spent traveling. The El Paso-born artist wandered through Panama, Mexico, Alabama, New England and Europe before settling in Galveston. His solo exhibition, “Mi Sangre Se Mueve Pero No Se Muere” (literally translated, “My blood moves, but it does not die”), displays an original perception of physicality and the physical environment. The rubbery landscapes and individuals depicted in the canvases recall the paintings of Ernie Barnes, most famous for Sugar Shack, which was featured on TV’s Good Times. Along with initials and elongated representations of people, Bustillos also shares Barnes’s fascination with sports — Bustillos’s Futbolista Latino portrays a soccer player seemingly competing against himself, his outstretched body attempting to steal the ball from an astral adversary. Bustillos also addresses social and economic issues, as in his Combined City Hall, a kind of skewed panorama of a protest rally downtown.
Mondays-Fridays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Starts: Sept. 19. Continues through Oct. 27, 2007