‘Vivo Mas’

In the garage of his brand new home in northernmost Brownsville, Cande Aguilar has splashed and scratched out the aesthetic of the dilapidated homes downtown.

“I’m charmed by the houses you see in the barrios, always half-painted, half-finished,” he said.

Aguilar lived in such a home, at the corner of Roosevelt and 14 Street, until he moved with his wife and two daughters last year.

Now, the cement floor of his garage is reminiscent of a Jackson Pollack painting. Two car seats sit on the floor, disembodied from the van they once inhabited.

Aguilar yearns for the inspiration that the eclectic downtown atmosphere brought to his artwork.

“All kinds of people would walk by. A wino, an old woman, a transvestite,” he said. “I kinda miss that, man. But moving has sort of helped me to refine myself, to think of art as a finer thing.”

Aguilar’s one-man show, “Vivo Mas,” will open on Jan. 18 at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art. The show will be a culmination of 10 years of his work.

“I hope that by now you can identify that my work is from South Texas,” he said.

Aguilar’s large canvasses often require multiple five and six-foot high panels, with realistic and abstract elements intermingling in a vibrant palette.

“A lot of the scratching and scraping comes from the urban setting,” said Aguilar, of the partially rubbed out sections of some of his paintings.

Found objects find their way into much of his work.

In two large Ring Pop canisters, the artist has placed dozens of paintings worth of the dry paint he has removed from his canvasses. Inside the plastic containers, one could easily mistake the scraps for candy wrappers.

Pieces of old signs are plastered to larger works, literally taking elements of the city and re-casting them as fine art.

This week they will grace the walls of the MFA, not a block from where pieces of wood decompose on neighborhood houses.

Though still relatively new to art at 35, Aguilar’s work is Picasso, Pollack, Matisse, Rivera and Warhol combined. It is large and friendly, messy and delicate.

Aguilar says he’d be busier in a larger city like Austin, where some of his work is displayed alongside that of Renoir and Warhol, but he’d rather stay here.

“As an artist, when I cross the border it’s like taking a visual drug,” he said.

To the MFA’s curator Jennifer Cahn, Aguilar is potentially more attractive as an artist because he is not just creating artwork about the border, he is doing it from the border.

“Everyone in the country reads about ‘immigration’ and ‘the wall,’ but when you see artwork from there you’re putting a human face to those things,” Cahn said.

Besides, Aguilar doesn’t mind taking his work on the road. He began his career as a musician in the popular Tejano group Elide y Avante. The group toured to promote their records, like the 1998 song “Duele,” which went platinum.

Aguilar used to primarily think of himself as a musician. The past decade of his artwork may prove otherwise. His paintings have begun to reach wider audiences.

“I’ve sold a painting to a woman from Scotland,” he said. “It’s pretty cool to know that your work is crossing the ocean.”

This show will include several pieces that signify completion for Aguilar. In a five-paneled painting he says he has captured South Texas.

“It’s a painting I’ve been wanting to paint for a long time,” he said.

He thinks that another work, “Land of Peace,” will be a showstopper.

“I’m being a thief with this painting,” he said. “I’m stealing the landscape from a painting by Van Gogh, a child’s drawing, and the boy from Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin,” he said. “It’s a very peaceful painting, it all just kind of came together.”

Aguilar will give an artist’s talk to museumgoers on Jan. 31 at 4 p.m. at the museum. A private preview of the exhibit with music, dinner, and a talk by Cahn will be given on Jan. 17 for $25.

He hopes the exhibit will continue to travel after it leaves the MFA on March 9.

“Hopefully, I’ll be real busy after this,” Aguilar said.