The Cartelera Talent House is haunted by artists with direction and skill who lend their industrious energy to the space itself. Each time I arrive at the studio ready to work, the space is receptive, encouraging creative diligence and unflagging perseverance. For me, Cartelera Talent House is a capsule for refining accomplishments and a spring board to becoming further integrated into the art community. It is my very own Trojan horse. Well, maybe not my very own.

The art I make is constantly evolving in process and in subject matter. That said, the subject matter tends to be cyclical, certain subjects emerge continually in a constant game of hide-and-seek.í‚   I often paint monsters, robots, spaceships, school children, and zombies.í‚   When found in large homogenous groups each of these is a faceless and terrifying horde. Zombie hordes! Robot Hordes! And even the scariest: Hordes of catholic school children!

The faceless mass is frightening because we cannot easily empathize with it's mob capability. I choose to transform each subject into an individual and, almost, a human.í‚   Through their postures and mechanical faces, the robots convey the gamut of human emotions. Sometimes this is not obvious and apparent but is easy to guess due to the situations they are painted in. The zombies are in a similar state, having decaying bodies but finding themselves in heartfelt situations. I enjoy the idea of something that is not human but once was. There is a type of longing there that borders on romantic. An inspirational moment occured for me when watching Lucio Fulci's "Zombie" which includes an underwater fight between a zombie and a shark. The extenuating circumstance is that the zombie seems to be defending a female diver. What is his motivation...food, love? I would like to believe the latter because it's awkwardí‚   and a bit beautiful. As a side note, I have really become interested in sharks, octopi and other sea creatures.

Dealing with catholic schoolchildren is a favourite of mine because the catholic school system and all of it's trappings are so rigid and children, by comparison, are wild and magical. Ií‚   was educated in the catholic school system since elementary school. We were considered to be the baddest kids around. But when tucking in your shirt means that you are good...well, breaking the rules becomes silly, idiotic fun. In my work the school children are emancipated, they ride teacups across the ocean, they sell stolen watches from the inside of their school blazer. They have an agency that is unrepressed.

í‚  I want to use painting as a vehicle to tell stories about robots who love humans, have cyborg catholic schoolchildren, who in turn are protected by the undead and revered by huge hairy beasts with tusks, horns and fierce expressions. I want to establish art for the subterranean techno-peasants, for the redemption of catholic school girls, and for the ever romantic necromancer in us all.

Rebecca Chaperon