about.
Carla Catalina also known as Carla Torres, Chillycarlita, or Lala depending on who you are or which domain you know her from. She not from this time or world… she was reborn in the depth of the Pacific Ocean. She took her first breath in the beautiful island of the Philippine where her secrets are told thru her eyes that she is indeed a native exotic multi-sided Filipina mermaid trapped in a body & mind to wonder the reality of a human soul until she finds the truth about the purpose of life & love. She has chosen the receptacle of a more enchanting creature, the erotic woman to take this journey, for they are chameleons, ever evolving, manipulative magicians, sexual life bearers & givers.
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Her works portray what she has felt and still feels for her own psychological reflection & hypersensitive pain. It is a visual analogy of the physical as well as emotional stress of her body, mind, & spirit. These may be seen as disturbing/dark images of a negative abstract existence; yet if we look beyond the image we can see as a whole, it unifies, representing the strength & sensuality of the only person she knows how to be.
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She uses the medium of “Bic” ballpoint pens on canvas which all spawned from working a retail job where pens traveled home with her. She was amused that she mindlessly collected many of them one day traveling on the Bart from Hayward (where she lived at that time) to where she works in San Francisco that she started to doodle her thoughts. Seeing how she mastered putting liquid eyeliner on a moving bus, drawing on small canvases came easy to maximize her time while commuting… And that’s where “Penning” (pen+drawing) was born.
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But only until nine years ago she found her greatest inspiration & gained the capability to reach beyond the depths of the ocean to restore her love for art/life & remain unbreakable… her child, “Kai.yah” (k´aya) in Filipino/Tagalog: n. capability. “Kai” in Hawaiian: n. ocean, Burmese: adj. unbreakable, Japanese: n. v. restoration, Nigerian: n. v. love.
