Dot Dot Julio

Just last month, Julio Pizana (DotDotJulio) was featured as one of the artists of the month at Dream Chasers Club for the Niños de la Tierra exhibition. I remember seeing the paintings and they immediately caught my eye. I have always had a fascination with water color and the presence of some abstract representation of demons. His illustrations and fine lines were extraordinary. 

Julio is a shy guy, an anime junkie with lots of talent, funny, and unconventional. He was born in Juarez and he initially started drawing Dragonball Z characters during second grade. Later on in high school he started drawing other creatures. He didn't consider himself the artsy kid and because he was in punk-hardcore bands during college, he stopped drawing for a while. He eventually started drawing again, but it took him a while to start showing people his work again. It helped that the art scene in El Paso started growing as well. 

Julio has so much imagination that he struggles sleeping and for him art is the perfect outlet. His process usually begins by drawing an eye and it just takes off from there. Julio explained that he constantly has images in his head. He never had a precise influence growing up, but lowbrow art, anime, and abstract art happen to be his favorites. He also has an appreciation for Frida Khalo, which did not happen until he was in high school. 

He also mentioned that his friend Skip influences him a lot since he always draws creatures as well. However, Julio had to change his style to stop being compared to Skip's and Portugal the Man's art because he did not like that all. 

If you ask Julio, he will tell you that he never did "art-art" when he was growing up, he considers his art a sort of "print-art". He considers his art affordable compared to other prices because he firmly believes it is important to have fair pricing. He would like for people to be able to afford his art. Because of that, Julio has even done stuff for free, like artwork for the band Miijas, trying to do what he can just to help out people with his art. His main goal being to spread the art, believing it is useless to keep it to himself. 

His last piece of advice for anyone chasing their dream is "Just do it. Don't think about it, just do it."

A big thank you to Julio. Go follow him on Instagram under DotDotJulio
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