The Art I Wasn't Looking to Create

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For five years, I painted espadrilles through my company Soulmates Collection — portraits of dogs, children, partners, the people and animals that meant the most to the people who wore them. What started as something small and personal ended up traveling to collectors all over the world, including Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Sharon Stone, Anna Faris, and Carlos Slim Jr. I also created a permanent public art piece at the Dogs & Cats Walkway in Maurice Ferré Park, right here in Miami, which still makes me smile when I think about it.

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But somewhere along the way, I stopped recognizing myself in what I was making. I was so deep in production mode — artist, designer, entrepreneur all at once — that my own voice had gotten quiet. So I paused Soulmates and gave myself permission to just... breathe. I went back to finishing my novel Trukas, and around that time I was invited to become Creative Director for Brickell and Key Biscayne magazines, which opened up a whole new way of thinking about storytelling — through image, through collaboration, through editorial vision.

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For three years, my personal art lived only in my sketchbooks. No audience, no deadlines, nobody waiting on anything. And that's actually where everything changed for me. The drawings got looser, more playful, more honest. They started feeling alive in a way I hadn't felt in a long time.

I kept them to myself for a while, until someone from the Colombian Consulate in Miami — who had followed my earlier work — reached out and invited me to show. I didn't want to go back to what I'd done before, so I created a completely new body of work in four weeks. That exhibition was later recognized by Miami New Times as one of the Best Art Exhibitions of 2025, which honestly still catches me off guard when I say it out loud.

That collection became Point Cero.

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Point Cero is where I go when I stop trying to control what's being made and just let it happen. Every painting starts without a plan — shapes come through movement and intuition, and somewhere in that process something appears that feels like it was always there, waiting. A rabbit, a dog, a face, a feeling — everyone sees something different, and that's exactly the point.

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For me, these paintings are portals. Not in a mystical, abstract way — I mean it literally. When I look at them, something in me remembers. Remembers how to wonder, how to play, how to see the world the way I did before life got so loud and serious. That's what I want for the people who collect them too. Not just a beautiful object on a wall, but a doorway back to something they already carry inside — a part of themselves that maybe got a little lost along the way.

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These paintings aren't trying to explain anything. They're an invitation. To slow down, to look, to play, to feel. The one that calls to you is yours — and I genuinely believe it found you for a reason.