Paris has a way of making you reconsider everything you thought you knew. I moved here in September 2023 thinking I understood abstraction. Three months in, I realized I'd barely begun.
The city doesn't reveal itself immediately. It's layered, complex, demanding sustained attention. Much like the best abstract art.
Arriving in Darkness
I arrived as the days shortened. Coming from Panama's relentless sunshine, the Parisian autumn felt like sensory deprivation. Gray skies, diminishing light, the visual intensity I'd relied on suddenly unavailable.
Most people would see this as limitation. I saw it as curriculum.
Paris forced me to look at light differently. When you have limited daylight, you notice how it moves. Where it concentrates. What happens in shadow. The quality of afternoon light—golden, low, revealing textures invisible at midday—became essential subject matter.
The Intellectual Atmosphere
Paris has a particular intellectual culture. The cafés where Sartre and de Beauvoir debated existentialism still exist. The energy of philosophical inquiry persists. Walking through the city, I felt constantly challenged to think more deeply, to question more rigorously.
This intellectual atmosphere seeped into my practice. In Panama and Madrid, I'd been exploring abstraction formally and conceptually. In Paris, I was forced to ask bigger questions. Why does abstraction matter? What is it trying to do that representation can't? What responsibility do artists have?
These questions intensified my work. They pushed me past technical mastery toward philosophical rigor. They forced me to articulate why abstract expressionism matters beyond aesthetics.
Urban Abstraction
There's something about Paris's density, its complexity, its layering of history and contemporary existence that makes abstraction feel necessary. You can't represent all this complexity literally. You have to abstract it, distill it, find visual languages that can hold contradiction and multiplicity.
Walking through Paris, I saw abstraction everywhere—not just in galleries but in the city itself. The way medieval architecture overlays modern infrastructure. How contemporary street art interrupts classical facades. The collision of languages on street signs, in conversations, in the visual field.
This urban abstraction became subject matter. My "Rhythms and Reflections" series explores how light refracts in the context of urban movement. It emerged directly from paying attention to Paris—how the city moves, how light behaves differently in dense urban space than it does isolated in studio.
The City as Teacher
Ultimately, Paris taught me that artistic practice isn't isolated. It's always in conversation with place—with the light available, the communities present, the intellectual atmosphere, the artistic history embedded in the location.
Moving to Paris didn't just provide new subject matter. It transformed how I think about my practice. It deepened my engagement with abstraction by forcing me to understand it as response to specific conditions rather than universal pursuit.
I'm still discovering what Paris teaches. The city reveals itself gradually, demanding sustained attention. Much like the work I make here.