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Subscriber First Name ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Dear Subscriber First Name,
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My studio is stacked with paintings while I have been making several small pieces in between a very busy few weeks of neuroscience, the Armory Show, and I am still printing and carving my Linocut Prints on Shirts by hand. September was very busy, and I am so excited to share everything that has happened.
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My work was in The Armory Show, I spent a week going back and forth to Montclair University, tracking my brain while viewing my own work and while in the studio making a completely new painting, and after four years of planning, research, and sending my work to Vienna, the neuroscience team finally came to New York. |
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The project began through Ava Alvarez’s MSc and PhD research, and over the past four years, her team at Artis.lab has been investigating my work as part of research into emotion sharing and neural synchrony between artists and viewers. During their time in New York, we also worked with Pablo Tinio’s lab on a new neuroaesthetics project looking at the areas of my brain activated while painting, as well as my eye tracking patterns. |
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For the past two years, two of my paintings have been in Vienna as part of a series of studies looking at emotion sharing and neural synchrony between artists and viewers. This September, the researchers came to New York to continue the project, but this time I was the one sitting in front of my own paintings. They tracked my brain while I looked at the two works that had been in Vienna, while also collecting questionnaires and interviews about my experience of viewing them. And then we did something completely new, I made a new painting while they tracked my brain during the process of painting. |
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So, for a few days, my studio practice became a little outside of my comfort zone. I was painting while researchers watched what was happening in my brain, and then looking at paintings I had made years earlier while they watched what happened there too. I have never painted while other people watched me, recorded me, or even spent an entire day with me while I created. My process is very personal to me. Normally, painting is my own alone time, a very intimate time with myself and my thoughts. I also had never painted a painting I was proud of in three days. Normally, I take weeks or months to finish one piece. This painting I created that week will not be seen publicly for a long time, but the process itself is something I am excited to share with you. |
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And while all of this was happening, the two paintings came back to my studio. One of them went almost immediately from the neuroscience study to The Armory Show, where it was shown publicly for the first time with Regular Normal and Galeria Playera.
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Our booth, Una Vez Más, was a collaboration between Regular Normal and Galeria Playera, a curation between Danny Baez and Tony Rodriguez, bringing together eight artists with very different practices, perspectives, and ways of making. It was my first time showing at The Armory Show, and I loved being able to experience the fair not just through my own work, but by being surrounded by so many different artists and conversations happening at once. I am very grateful for the people visiting the fair who stopped to spend time with the painting and talk to me about it. |
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Quiero desangrarme, hasta que me muera
(Loving You Feels Like a Suicide Mission) 2024 21 x 27 in Oil Painting on Canvas with Paper Mache and Hemp Fiber and Human Hair sculpture on Wood. |
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The work Quiero Desangrarme, Hasta Que Me Muera (Loving You Feels Like a Suicide Mission) explores my relationship with love and heartbreak. It reflects a pattern of offering myself fully while knowing the cost, knowing it will end in heartbreak, knowing I am walking into failure, knowing I am the one holding the knife to my own throat. The title itself comes from the Colombian bolero Amor Gitano, performed by Alci Acosta and composed by Héctor Flórez Osuna. In the song, the speaker responds to betrayal with the desire to bleed himself to death rather than live without the person he loves. The title draws from this tradition of bolero, and from the larger culture of boleros and vallenatos in which love and heartbreak are often expressed through an almost impossible emotional intensity, to love so deeply, dramatically, and completely that separation feels like death. |
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This language of love is familiar to me. I have inherited a cultural understanding of love that can be enormous, theatrical, devotional, and painful. To love is to give everything. To lose someone is to lose part of yourself. The image of bleeding for love becomes both metaphor and ritual, an offering of the self to something that may never be returned. The work is also about the heartbreak of never being loved out loud, never feeling good enough, never believing I am worthy. I allow myself to enter loves that I already know will fail because the love I truly need would demand more from me. It would ask me to confront my flaws and reveal the vulnerable, ugly parts of myself. Instead, I choose people who will never fully want me, love me, or truly see me. In that dynamic, I don't have to risk being seen for who I really am. |
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I sacrifice my softness for love, knowing that each heartbreak hardens me. Each time I leave hurt, my walls grow higher. It becomes a constant sacrifice for others, hoping they might feel loved even as it drains me, even as I bleed out. I have been giving to others what has never reached me, loving them in the ways I wish they would love me. This ongoing heartbreak becomes an endless offering of myself, a desperate hope that my sacrifice might mean something, even as it destroys me, even as blood comes out of me. In this piece, I revisit my boundaries, or the lack of them, revealing the places where I have bled silently, longing for acknowledgment and recognition. I have slit my own veins for love, knowing that to love is to bleed. |
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But the work extends beyond romantic love. It reflects the difficulties of loving within colonized spaces. In lands shaped by systemic forces, displacement, violence, and rupture, love can become hardened and distant. This absence has shaped me, embedding a yearning that feels eternal. It speaks to my experience of love as exile, yearning for something that feels essential but remains just beyond reach. |
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And perhaps that is the contradiction at the center of the work. I know that love can make me bleed, and I still cannot stop reaching for it. 🐆🦂🌙🦋🐊
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The other painting that came home from Vienna has a very different story. This is the sister painting to Quiero desangrarme, hasta que me muera, but it came from a very different place. Where the first painting looks at love, heartbreak, and the ways we offer ourselves to something that hurts us, this work began with water, death, transformation, and the feeling of being caught between holding on and letting go. I made this painting in 2024, and then it left my studio almost immediately. It traveled to Vienna and became part of the same research that I’ve been telling you about. So although I have lived with this painting for years and have been able to sit and reflect with the emotions that created this piece, very few people have actually seen it. Now that it has returned home, I feel like I am meeting it again too. There is something about its return that feels like a kind of rebirth, a painting leaving one life behind and coming back into the world in another form, carrying everything that happened to it along the way. So this is my first time introducing Hija de la Serpiente to you.
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‘Dicen que el agua es la sangre de el mundo’(hija de la serpiente) 2024 21 x 27 in Oil Painting on Canvas with Paper Mache and Hemp Fiber sculpture on Wood |
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Dicen que el agua es la sangre del mundo (Hija de la Serpiente) reflects my experience as a witness to change and my relationship with the afterlife, death, and the thoughts of ending my own life. It draws from Amazonian myths of a giant anaconda, never seen, never found, yet leaving behind the evidence of its existence through the skin it sheds. In these myths, the anaconda is said to be the child of the river, and the river itself is the heart of the land. It feeds the surrounding countries, the land, the animals, society, it pumps blood through its veins. They search for a mythical 90-foot serpent, only to find and kill the 40-foot one they were able to see. What if, in all their searching, they found me instead? What if, in all their searching, they killed me instead? |
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The title references the film The Kings of the World, where five young boys watch everything being taken from them as their small village is sold and displaced for mining. They search for their home and try to reclaim their land knowing there is nothing left to lose, because they have already lost everything. Even death becomes part of that possibility. When they finally reach their land, it is dead from the mining. Nothing was saved. Nothing was spared. |
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I have considered death my whole life, wondering when it will be my turn or if it will be under my terms or theirs, those above me who continue to look for a 90 foot snake. It feels like drowning with weights attached to my feet, the grip of a serpent tightening every time I try to expand, breathe, or take control. And as I keep my head above water, I float through the river, floating feels like the closest thing to flying, like an angel fallen into water, spreading wings that can no longer lift me. Drowning might be my way to heaven, where water demands surrender. I let it all go. Fighting its grip is futile, only by letting go can I find relief. There is a strange comfort in facing death, in knowing that fear begins to dissolve when I stop fighting it. |
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A snake does not truly die when it sheds its skin, the snake doesn’t die unless someone kills it. The skin becomes evidence of the life it has already lived, a witness to change, growth, and becoming something larger. Maybe the grip I have on the physical world keeps my hands from receiving what is already written for me, even if what is written includes death. I am no longer as afraid of what comes after, or what comes after me. I think this is what the serpent teaches me, that transformation does not always look like survival. Sometimes it looks like surrender. I yearn to swim when I no longer feel my wings. |
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🐆🦂🌙🦋🐊 Both paintings came from a charcoal sketch series I started in 2024, which I’ve continued developing into 2026. The painting Quiero desangrarme, hasta que me muera and Dicen que el agua es la sangre del mundo (Hija de la Serpiente) came from the original sketches-
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‘Loving you feels like a suicide mission’ 18 x 24 2024 Charcoal on Paper |
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‘Hija de la serpiente’ 18 x 24 2024 Charcoal on Paper |
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🐆🦂🌙🦋🐊 If you are interested in collecting work, I’ve recently added new pieces that are available and ready to find new homes, including the new work and the original sketches that were made as part of the process of creating these paintings. Available Work Each piece carries a part of the research, stories, and materials that have shaped my practice over the years, and collecting one of my works directly supports the continuation of my studio, allowing me to keep developing new projects, materials, and research. If you have any questions about pricing, payment plans, or the work itself, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m always happy to share images and details directly, and I’m open to finding an option that feels right for both of us. 🐆🦂🌙🏍️🐊🦋
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I often think of these newsletters as an extension of my studio, because so much of what enters my work comes from simply paying attention to what I am consuming and thinking about. My research isn’t always a book or an academic text. Sometimes it is a song I’ve had on repeat, a movie I can’t stop thinking about, a story someone told me, something I read years ago, a myth, a memory, or a piece of pop culture that suddenly gives me a way into a painting. I collect all of these things while I work, and they slowly begin to speak to each other. I’ve included some of those references below for anyone who wants to follow the threads with me. I’ll continue updating my sources and references and sharing them through these newsletters. Thank you, always, for your support, your curiosity, and for being in conversation with me through this work. Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Con cariño,
Rossana 🐆🦂🌙🏍️🐊🦋
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Books I have read that have inspired are referenced in my work;
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‘Introduccion Al Pasado Aborigen’ - Luis Duque Gomez ‘Drug Cartels Do Not Exist’ - Oswaldo Zavala, William Savinar ‘There Are No Dead Here’ - Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno ‘In The Time of The Butterflies’ - Julia Alvarez ‘Ophelia’ - Lisa Klein ‘Fighting Monsters in the Abyss’ - Harvey F.K. ‘The Serpent and the Rainbow’ - Wade Davis ‘The Alchemist’ - Paulo Coelho ‘Are Prisons Obsolete?’ - Angela Y. Davis ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’ - Angela Y. Davis ‘Simón Bolívar: The Life and Legacy of the Venezuelan Leader Who Liberated Much of Latin America from the Spanish Empire’ - Charles River Editors ‘The Banana Wars: A Captivating Guide to the Interventions of the United States in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean (U.S. Military History)’ - Captivating History ‘Parable of the Sower’ - Octavia E. Butler ‘Parable of the Talents’ - Octavia E. Butler ‘La casa de los espíritus’ - Isabel Allende ‘Magdalena; River Of Dreams’ - Wade Davis ‘100 years of Solitude’ - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ‘Love in the time of Cholera’ - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ‘Open Veins of Latin America’ - Eduardo Galeano ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ - Che Guevara ‘A Revolutionary Life’ - Che Guevara ‘All About Love’ - Bell Hooks ‘Del Amor y Otros Demonios’ - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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Films and series I loved, rewatched, reference, hold on to;
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From the Heart of the World The Elder Brother's Warning Aluna - An Ecological Warning by the Kogi People Birds of Passage (Pájaros de verano) - Ciro Guerra Embrace The Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente) - Ciro Guerra The Wind Journeys (Los viajes del viento) - Ciro Guerra La Vendedoras de rosas - Víctor Gaviria Los Reyes Del mundo - Laura Mora Ortega Tigers Are Not Afraid - Issa Lopez Banana Land: Blood, Bullets & Poison Documentary Simon - Diego Vicentini Once Upon A Time in Venezuela; Congo mirador - Anabel Rodriguez Rios Devil's Pie: D'Angelo - Carine Bijlsma https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=481Rsy3NLpM - Palace of Justice Sin Senos No Hay Paraiso - Gustavo Bolívar Baby Sicarios - David Beriain Deprisa! Deprisa! - Carlos Saura Rosario Tijeras Judy Blume Forever Paraiso Travel - Simón Brand Frontera Verde - Felipe Linares Sana Que Sana - Gabriella Aguirre The 2 Escobars - Michael Zimbalist, Jeff Zimbalist Cinema Paraiso - Giuseppe Tornatore Rigo - Andres Lopez El Santo Contra La Invasión De Los Marcianos - Alfredo B. Crevenna
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Podcasts I love, learn from, keep up with and have gone back to;
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Classes that I am so thankful for;
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-Modern Art & Ideas by The Museum of Modern Art -In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting by The Museum of Modern Art -Feminism and Social Justice by The University of California, Santa Cruz -Race and Cultural Diversity in American Life and History by University of Illinois -HISTORY: Black Rebellion in the Caribbean taught by Dr. Margarita Lila Rosa -Doing Historical Archival Research Online taught by Dr. Margarita Lila Rosa
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Writings that have inspired me, taught me, I reference and feel aligned to;
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