The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
2025 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Antonio Gonzalez-Garcia
Columbus OH 43207 United States Home Phone: 4194709259 Birthday: August 20, 1990 Website: ANTONIOxEREZ
Bio
I was born in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, in 1990. I started drawing when I was 8 years old, and since then, I couldn’t stop. My first contact with actual art was the extracurricular art classes that Mr. Jesus Rosa-Martinez instructed. Due to several struggles in the household, including drug abuse and bipolarity disorder, and an economically disadvantaged situation, mixed with my adolescence, led me to step away from creating during this difficult period.
2006 was the year I entered Antoni Gabarre’s Pintamuros (Wallpainters) project, which reignited my passion for art. Here, I met graffiti and tattoo artist Samuel “Pol,” whose friendship helped me find my way back. After two years with Pintamuros, I faced a setback when I spent a night in jail for “vandalizing” a train—an experience that made me rethink my artistic expression.
In 2011 I had the impulse to return to create and pursue my studies. In 2013 I completed my BFA at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios (Arts and Crafts School) in Jerez de la Frontera. Literary critic and writer Carlos Manuel Lopez-Ramos and eco-printmaker and graphic designer Domingo Martinez-Gonzalez were my two mentors during my art studies in Spain. They instilled in me a deeper understanding of philosophy and visual concepts beyond Spanish Realism.
I said goodbye to Spain the same year and moved to Avignon, France. In September 2013, I applied to one of the two college spots at the Ecole Superieure d’Art d’Avignon (Avignon College of Art). I was accepted despite being a competitive process with more than one hundred students applying. Art Historian and photographer Sylvie Nayral and artist Alain Leonesi empowered and secured my will to keep creating in this new country where I was known as the “Spanish realist” by my art friends, essentially because everyone else was more into the installation, performance, land-art, or social art. All this effort came to an end when I suffered from depression in March 2016.
With the support of close friends and therapy, I gradually regained my life. I explained everything to the professors who tried to contact me and kept on creating and working. A few months later I met Rachel, the person who changed my life and who appears in almost all my paintings. She had the opportunity of finding a good job in the USA, so she moved to Columbus, Ohio. At the end of 2016, I moved to Spain, and at the beginning of 2017 I started working on a social project called Yo Soy Zona Sur (I Am Southside) where I created art workshops for adolescents living in poor and violent neighborhoods, and having issues with High School (the irony of life).
In December 2018 I moved to the USA. In Columbus, I was introduced to Studios On High members and I was part of the group until gallery owner, collector, and art lover Sharon Weiss saw my work at my 2021 solo show, and accepted to represent me. In Columbus, I also connected with painter Fred Fotchman, on which I found a friend and family.
I was introduced to Scott Burkholder in 2019, and since then, he has been helping me to rethink what and why I painted what I was painting, but also to understand the business side of Art. In 2024 I had the privilege of having a solo show at his space, and to connect with many art lovers and art figures of the B’more scene.
Thanks to Reese Brothers Productions I worked on projects for the Hilton Tower (2022), and the Nationwide Children’s Hospital (2023).
Since 2023 I have been instructing watercolor and drawing at the McConnell Art Centers.
In 2024, I received the Greater Columbus Arts Council Art Project grant, which opened a new door of opportunities. The project, which is in the process of being developed, will create opportunities for adolescents In the South West area of Franklin County and provide art tools for them to experiment with their creativity.
Artist Statement
What happens when you are grown inside an inestable household? What happens when two of your childhood friends commit suicide, Miguel because suffering from depression and Alesandro from schizophrenia? What happens to your psyche when you move to a different country, twice? What happens when your parents die when you are young? What kind of support makes me/us keep going and copying with our traumas and personal situations?
The series Social Organs tries to answer these questions, organize, structure it, and classify moments I spent with family and friends. It reveals my life, painted and framed, privacy and trust, and makes it transparent, like the absence of walls on the canvas.
This project is expanding the reasearch about the community support in different communities, with a pilot project starting in 2025 in the South side of Columbus, Ohio.
