Diablada (Large Painting)

This painting is big, about four feet across, and even then it feels like it could barely contain the mask. I never considered it finished, maybe because Carnaval itself never feels finished; it spills out of boundaries, it overwhelms. The Diablada mask here stares back with its bulging eyes, its horns twisting upward, its mouth caught somewhere between a grin and a scream.

I kept the colors loud on purpose. Carnaval isn’t quiet, it doesn’t whisper. It shouts, it demands attention, it vibrates with brass bands and fireworks and bodies in motion. When I painted this, I wasn’t trying to replicate the mask as an object. I wanted to capture that sensation of being inside the noise, the color, the excess. Maybe that’s why I never “finished” it: because how do you finish something that is meant to be chaotic, alive, and in motion?