Nicaragua To Vegas To Glasgow

The Goodkind Gallery threw a reception recently to open the showing of the works of Orlando Montenegro, an artist from Las Vegas.

What he brought to Glasgow falls into two styles: charcoal/pencil drawings of women with tattoos or in unusual combinations with large insects, and abstract acrylic paintings that suggest anatomical shapes and the topography of maps at the same time.

He said he explores the identity of the people through what they put on their skin.

“What I like about tattoos is they remind me of Japanese prints,” Montenegro said. “They’re graphic and stylized.”

He draws the women and insects to create dreamlike, surreal pictures. They represent metamorphosis and change.

“I’m not very specific about what I want to communicate. Sometimes I just combine things, then make a series of them, like the tattooed girls.”

He likes drawing the body but he also pursues abstraction.

“I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t understand it. I thought an 8-year-old could do it,” he said.

He learned and read about abstractionism and discovered that the artist can create space with lighter and darker marks.

Born in Nicaragua in 1982, Montenegro moved to Las Vegas. He took advanced drawing classes and printmaking at the University of Montana, where he was a classmate of Cathryn Sugg, the owner of Goodkind Gallery, and he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Nevada. He went on to get a master’s at the University of Arizona in Tucson and was an adjunct professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Montenegro’s work will be on display and for sale until the end of August.