VÍCTOR DANIEL MELÉNDEZ
b. 1974 Brooklyn, NY, USA
SELECTED WORKS
BIOGRAPHY
Víctor Daniel Meléndez has been making art from a very early age. At the age of eleven, he was admitted to the Escuela Central de Artes Visuales in Santurce, Puerto Rico, where he attended from seventh to tenth grade. He later earned a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. He began, but did not complete, his Ph.D. in psychology in the early 2000s. He currently resides in Ellensburg, WA, USA.
Víctor Daniel Meléndez has always been spiritually inclined and is a student of Theosophy. When he was very ill as a toddler, it was a local healer, a santigüera, in Puerto Rico who finally cured him of his illness.
Víctor Daniel Meléndez enjoys using the act of drawing as a form of meditation on what H.P. Blavatsky called "absolute abstract space" and as an exploration of the tension between the theosophical concepts of "unity" and "differentiation". When he uses drawing in this way, he has no clear idea of what his hand will end up producing, and most of his drawings are completely automatic. He explains that what he does have is a general sense of 'density' or 'solidity' and its opposite.
Sometimes he will meditate specifically on a theosophical text and an image will begin to form in his mind. In these cases, however, the drawings keep changing, as if he is trying to give form to what is forever formless.
There are times when Víctor Daniel Meléndez has the urge to draw imaginary portraits, which he does almost effortlessly, as if guided by an external force.
