David Blancas was born in May 1973 in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, a small town in northern Mexico, and took up drawing and painting at an early age. He placed first in the national art competition El Arte Que Nos Mueve, sponsored by Chrysler. In 2001, he was again the first place winner of the same contest held to commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month. He currently resides in San Antonio where he works in portraiture, murals, and graphic design. This untitled portrait is originally a mixed-media painting: oil on a mosaic tile wood panel. "I am trying to push the boundaries of my work by experimenting with mixed media. Using different surfaces such as mosaic tile and metal as my canvases has pushed my painting into areas I had never thought of before. The combination of the tactile quality of these surfaces and the two-dimensional aspects of my painting has inspired me to create works that function on multiple levels. The union of these elements allows the work to take on a life of its own, yielding results that I can never truly anticipate."

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