Omar Gonzalez has long known art would play a role in his life. Growing up on a ranch outside Kingsville, he found inspiration early from his elementary school fine arts teacher, Mrs. Cruz, who encouraged his creative spark. But after high school, he took a more traditional route, earning a master’s degree in business before realizing his true calling was art.
With the support of his parents, he returned to school and earned a master’s degree in fine arts from UTSA. Here, he found his niche in printmaking, although, as a multidisciplinary artist, his practice also extends into sculpture and installations.
For Gonzalez, printmaking covers a wide range of techniques, each with its own origin and history, making it a fun, multi-layered art form. He often begins with collages of source photos and then chooses the medium that best serves the subject.
In grad school, his work began centering on his identity––growing up with no close neighbors, surrounded by open pastures and cattle, shaped his sense of place. That environment became the heart of his autobiographical work.
Over time, his father also became a central figure in his art. “He was my subject, my figure in my work,” Gonzalez said. “The tools that I associate with my dad, the labor that he would do every day, that’s what I connect with.”
After his father’s passing last year, Gonzalez’s art shifted from exploring his upbringing and environment to focusing on the grief process. His latest series, featured in his solo exhibition at K Space Contemporary until Sept, 25, centers on his father’s actual tool panel, complete with its painted outlines and nail hangers.
“Each tool has a purpose, a function. I think we ourselves have a purpose to each other, our family, our friends,” he said. “When someone is no longer in our life, we have this sense of void that we can’t fill.” For Gonzalez, the work symbolizes that shared purpose and also reflects how losses are unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Balancing the heavy, personal nature of his studio work is Mucha Lucha Press, the collaborative venture Gonzalez runs with Jesús De La Rosa, who was once his professor and continues to be a valued mentor. What began as live printmaking demonstrations with custom woodcut prints has become a performative experience. Wearing a luchador mask, Gonzalez blends the theatrics of performance art with the craft of printmaking, creating an interactive experience for participants.
When he is not creating, he is shaping the next generation of artists as a professor at Texas A&M University–Kingsville, teaching advanced printmaking, design and drawing. Inspired by the mentors who encouraged him as a budding artist, he now strives to offer that same support to his classroom. “I want to be like that for my students,” Gonzalez said. “Where I’m at, I want them to go beyond.”
With exhibitions currently lined up in Austin, Dallas and Corpus Christi, Gonzalez continues to build on his current body of work while exploring new ways to merge personal history with creative expression. His art remains a space where memory, identity and craft meet, and where the tools of the past continue to inspire the work of the present.
