Carlos Ramírez is a Cuban-born painter who was raised in Miami. He comes from a fashion background, and even designed for his fashion label for many years in NYC. "The nature of that work – sketching, drawing, and color – allowed me to grow and develop my language as an artist. That experience , coupled with having been raised in the tropics, has shaped my perception and use of color." My work plays the edge between abstraction and representational. Ink sketches within the work depicting leaves, petals, stones loosely reference nature, while the underlying structure and palette remain rooted in abstraction. This contrast between the recognizable and the obscure allows for the viewer to connect with the work on various levels. I presently live and work in Tucson, out of an airy light-filled studio that looks out to the mountains on one side and a sky-blue pool on the other.