I create mixed media paintings that explore the psychic space of migration: the psychological, emotional, spiritual, and unseen spaces of the mind, body, and spirit. My work blurs the boundaries between abstraction and recognizable imagery, such as landscape, to offer a wider spectrum of meaning. My focus is less on situating the viewer within a specific site or memory and more on facilitating engagement with various references, perspectives, and departures in the artwork. I’m excavating the hidden dimensions and textures of migration, and transformation. 

My work revolves around the concept of presence and the nuanced embodiment of the invisible and phenomenological aspects of life—ranging from light and divinity to memory, grief, joy, and abundance. I create portals— ruptures guiding viewers into alternative dimensions. I utilize references of the water, the land, and the celestial in my work to explore the spiritual potentials inherent in them, and collapse simplistic binaries of here/there, in/out, by flowing in between these spaces. The chain-link fence is another central motif in my work that has come to represent the enduring presence of grief. A contemporary symbol for separation, migration, and borders, the fence first emerged from my experience of being an undocumented DACA recipient in the US. Now the fence behaves more like a ghost representing the unseen forces that shape migratory experiences and echo the resonance of past lives. 

The journey into the portal unfolds as viewers immerse themselves in the obsessive layering of material, color, and texture I create using acrylic and spray paint, along with colored pencils, oil pastels, and crayons. The process is both intuitive and physically demanding, initiated by tracing original photographs of the ocean on the backside of the mylar. Expressive tracings are layered with fluid acrylic paint, accompanied by the spray painting of a chain-link fence on the backside, creating a phantom image on the front side. The result of this transfer of information is an image that appears like a dream or memory that is at threat of being forgotten. 

I employ the emotional resonance of color in my paintings to reiterate a sense of fantasy and otherworldliness. Color helps to guide the viewer through a visual and emotional experience. I utilize an often highly-saturated palette to seduce my viewer towards introspection and the often grim realities of grief, the traumas of migration or the quieter experiences of communing with one’s thoughts. 

Francisco Donoso (b.1988) is a transnational artist and curator based in NYC. He is currently at the LMCC Workspace Residency 2023-24. He is a new member and co-director of TSA NY.

Originally from Ecuador, but raised in Miami, FL, he's been a recipient of DACA since 2013. He received his BFA from Purchase College and has participated in fellowships and residencies at Wave Hill as a Van Lier Fellow, Stony Brook University, The Bronx Museum Artist in the Marketplace, and the Kates-Ferri Projects Residency among others. Francisco has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout the US notably at El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx Museum of Arts, Children's Museum of Manhattan, Wave Hill, NADA House, Kates-Ferri Projects, Field Projects, Second Street Gallery, Baik+Khnessyer, and SPRING/BREAK LA. He is a recipient of an Artist Corp Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Cultural Solidarity Fund Grant.

His work is in corporate and many private collections like Capital One Collection and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Collection. Donoso’s work has been written about in Art & Object, Hyperallergic, CRUSHfanzine, The Latinx Project Intervenxions, The Financial Times, The Village Voice, and Art Zealous among others.

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