Victor Hugo de Luna: How Asynchronicity Makes For Interesting Art Overall
Victor Hugo de Luna discusses his love for the creative process and how his interest in asynchronicity affects his artistry. Interview by Yasmin Al-Omair-Nuncio.
Yasmin Al-Omair-Nuncio: Who are you? How would you describe yourself as a person and as an artist?
Victor Hugo de Luna: My name is Victor Hugo de Luna. I came to college seeking a degree in history, and I pretty much finished that but I needed a minor, so I randomly just chose art. As a child, I was interested in art, but I never took it seriously or anything like that but I found out that I really liked it, and I decided to change my minor to a major. I double majored, and now it’s all that I want to do, really. My concentration is in painting and I had a really fun time. I would describe my artwork as playing around with planes, playing with planes. I like to collage a lot. I put things together in odd ways and overlap things. That’s what I would describe my art as: playing with planes.
I know you said that you double major now, but was there something specific that pulled you towards this path?
I would say it was probably my Painting I class that gave me the big push. But I knew from the start that I needed something in my life that I wasn’t getting at all from my previous degree. Something felt missing. I found it, luckily, because I am really confident about this. I really enjoy it. I suppose when I was a kid, I would draw and I would paint, but it wasn’t anything like I thought I would be doing for the rest of my life or anything like that. Because every kid is creative in some sense, right? Everyone draws and everyone does things like that. I guess I realized here in college that I really did want to do [art] as a career.
Who or what would you say are your biggest inspirations?
I have a lot of inspirations. When it comes to painters, I really love Helen Frankenthaler, Giorgio de Chirico, [and] I have some contemporary artists too like Emilio Villalba who’s great. And even movie directors like David Lynch is awesome. I love Quentin Tarantino. It’s just the way [Tarantino] frames his movies and the colors he chooses and all that. Even music is a super great inspiration to me. I love the Beatles. Whenever I listen to their music, I feel like I can see the song at times.
I know that you said that you like working with collages but what are your favorite techniques or mediums?
I started off with ink. I would draw a lot on my sketchbook just freehand and although I still really enjoy that, I think I found out that painting works really well with my style. Just because I like putting something down and then putting something over it and then over it and over it. I found out that painting is really good for that. I know a lot of people say they’re scared of oil painting because it’s really permanent and you have to wait a lot, but you really don’t. Honestly, painting is always reversible. You can always layer something on top of it. It’s awesome.
In your ink drawings from 2018-2019, there’s not a lot of color and then later there’s suddenly a huge influx and inclusion of color. What sparked that change?
I’m actually surprised you caught that because I’ve been thinking about it too. If you go way back, I would exclusively work in pen and ink, and I would never [add] color because I thought it would look tacky. I really like the lines, the line work, and I would focus on that. But like I said, I think that Painting I class really did change everything because that’s when I was almost forced to use color in a way. Discovering color, I guess rediscovering color, was great for my art. I feel like I couldn’t do anything without it anymore. I don’t think I could do a black and white painting because it’s just not my thing. I think that color is very, very important for conveying what you want to convey in an art piece. Obviously, it’s not a requirement, but I love using it because it just evokes an emotion, a subconscious emotion in you, which I find fascinating.
I noticed you sometimes dabble in 3D art, like the replica of your own head and the melted ice cream cone. What did you find different or interesting about 3D art compared to 2D painting and drawing?
Sculpture brings up a new way to work. I’ve only taken one sculpture class, so I didn’t truly understand how to do anything, but by the end of the semester, I found out that I have the same idea of building a sculpture that I do painting a painting. I have the same mentality of, “Okay, this is my vision, and I’m going to do it how I see it in my head.” I was told that I sculpt like paint. It goes together. This ice cream feels like it would be a painting or one of my paintings. So I found that kind of interesting. Those sculptures are a whole other monster. I would love to continue to sculpt, but it’s just like you need to know how to work the tool and know conceptually that the concepts that I have in my head would translate well to sculpture. But it would just be a really difficult thing to achieve because of the materials and stuff. The materials and the budget. You need these tools. So I think painting lends itself better to me because it’s, I mean like, I don’t wanna say it’s easier, but it is easier to put it on a canvas than it is put it on a physical space. That being said, I love sculpture and if I had an unlimited budget I would probably become a sculptor.
How does your inspiration strike? Where do your ideas come from?
I watch a lot of movies, I listen to a lot of music, and I consume a lot of art. I’ve been going to all sorts of art museums around here in Texas, and I like to take my time with it. That’s a great way to get ideas. But I would also say that I think about things from my past. I like to incorporate a lot of history into my paintings. I have a lot of sculptures and classical Roman references. So I appropriate a lot of those things into my pieces because I’ve also always been fascinated with history. I have a whole degree on it, so. It’s just fun getting things from the past and putting it with things right now in the present. I think there’s a term for it, I think it’s called asynchronistic. Asynchronistic, where you get two things from two different points in time and you kind of mash them together and they kind of work, they kind of don’t. I like the feeling that it evokes. It’s kind of interesting seeing like this ancient Roman statue next to a Wii nunchuck like that’s just pretty weird to me.
What is, or what was, one of your most challenging paintings for you? However you define challenging.
That’s a pretty hard one. I would say probably the one that gave me the most difficult time was when I did recently, it’s called Pipe Dream. It’s this kind of long panoramic frame, and it used to be an old painting. I didn’t like how it came out back then, and it was sitting in my closet, so I took it back to the studio and I painted over it. I had an idea in mind I was gonna do a rock band of some sort, and collage a bunch of elements into it. I had the beer cans, the band, and the truck, and it kind of ended up not turning out the way I wanted so I covered it again, for the second time. I finally landed on a concept that I thought was pretty cool, but I kept some of the elements from my original ideas. At the end it kind of, it was kind of like a mishmash of ideas. I’m not sure if I’m proud of that painting, but I think it was very interesting. It kind of showed me that it’s okay to not have a concept in mind. Just make paintings, see what works, and it’s okay if it doesn’t turn out right. You can always do something with it later on. I feel like every painting is a good experience. You learn something from yourself one way or another, even if it comes up bad or if it comes out great. I think this painting showed me something really, really interesting in that sense.
This next one might be a bit hard as well, but what is your favorite artwork that you’ve created? Would you be able to choose one?
Oh, yeah. That’s very difficult. I’m not in love with any of my paintings or anything. I always see them as stepping stones for something that I wanna achieve, which I don’t know if that’s a good mentality to have, but I really don’t see myself just being in love with it. I’ve heard that that could be a good thing too, because a lot of people get really heated during critique or they take offense to their artwork. Whenever someone points out something that’s wrong with their piece. It shouldn’t be that way because critique is all about learning and seeing other people’s perspectives on your piece. You should never take it personally. That being said, I think I would critique all of my pieces. I think there’s always something to say. I guess I like the one that I’m currently working on, um, just because I’m currently working on it. That’s the reason why I like it the most. But I’m sure that that’s gonna change. It’s called Postmortem.
What do you think is the best part of creating art?
I would say what everyone says: that you can express yourself in your own unique way [which] is really beautiful. For me, I think whenever I’m creating a piece, I love, absolutely love the creative process. I love it so much that I don’t just have a plan for my painting and then I do it. I’m in the creative process the whole way. So halfway through the painting, if something isn’t working out, I scrape it off with my pallet knife and I put something else in place, right? Like it’s this creative process, this fuel, that keeps me going to finish the actual painting. Then all I have to do is just achieve the painting. There’s nothing to do after that point. It’s just, “Oh, I have this cool concept now I just have to put it onto the canvas.” I feel like I work differently in that sense. Where it’s just, “I’m doing the painting, and then this color isn’t working or this background shouldn’t be purple, it should be red.” So I scrape off all the purple, and I put the red, and then that doesn’t work, so I change one of the figures to better accommodate the red and stuff like that. I think being in the moment, with the creative process, is probably my favorite part of doing art.
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