Artist Narrative

Art has been a major part of my identity and my economic and academic partner. I grow up in Chile in a house of artists.   As an adolescent, I learned to paint with oils and later with acrylics. Those skills helped me to paint idyllic and romantic Caribbeans and Japanese landscapes for commercial purpose. That work helped me in great part to afford the cost of my college tuition as Biochemist student at Concepcion University of Chile. During my college time, I decorated windows, Pre-schools buildings, designed theater setts, designed announce posters for the office of Cultural Extension to Community, and painted lady party dresses. I continue painting acrylics during the years I completed my PhD degree in Biological Sciences. During my undergraduate and graduate studies, I was identified as the "scientist artist" by professors, classmates, and later by my students. Humbly I may say, I regain the appellative, "A renaissance man" after I moved to USA. 

My abstract collages invite viewers to navigate through harmonic compositions of shapes, textures, and colors. I challenge myself to create interesting pieces of art with very simple, unusual, and somehow cheap recycled materials. My original art pieces intend to produce feelings of tranquility and placidity. Even more, the combination of unconventional materials also inspires serious enquiry and original interpretations. 

Oscar Lazo, Summer, 2024 Nailed fabrics & cords on agglomerate plastic 

1n 1987, I escaped the military dictatorial situation of Chile moving with my wife and two sons to Charleston, South Carolina, where I completed my Doctoral Thesis at the Medical University of SC and later became an Instructor in Genetic Biochemistry. During the five years I spent there, I kept painting with acrylics and showed my work in Art Fairs and at colleges. I arrived at Boston in 1994 to work as Lecturer in Biochemistry at Harvard Medical School. At Harvard, I won a Second Place in an Art Competition named "In My Own Time" with a collage made with pieces of fabric nailed to a wood board. The tithe of my piece was "The Agony of the Court Chester".

After six years at Harvard and due to the legal requirements to immigrate to this country, I left the university as researcher, but I kept teaching science in the evening. In 1997 I moved to the Public Education System and became math-science teacher. Later, I accept the position of Assistant Principal at Collins Middle School in Salem, MA. I stayed in that position for fifteen years.  During my time at the Middle School, I created after school programs for Art and for Science and also combined those disciplines in my art work. I exhibited my paintings at colleges and libraries of the Massachusetts north shore and at Farmington, ME.

I am currently retired from the Public-School Education System. However, as Adjunct Faculty at Endicott College and Urban College of Boston (UCB), I keep teaching courses of Mathematics and Sciences. After I presented an exhibition of my artwork at UCB, I was invited to teach Contemporary Art courses in that college. I taught art classes in parallel to my Mathematics and Science classes for two years. That situation ended with the pandemic. Now, I teach courses online to both colleges. 

During my life in Boston, I have shown my work in Colleges and Universities , Community Centers , Public Libraries , Art Galleries and, painted murals in Elementary and Middle schools. I taught Contemporary Art at Urban College of Boston.

It is well known that life is a circle, and my life is not an exception. Since the virus pandemic, I went back to my childhood game: to play with fabrics and nails. Why nails? During my childhood and according with the Chilean machoism idiosyncrasy, my father and grandfather forbidden me to learn how to saw the fabrics, because it was considered a work for girls. In my birth house were two seamstresses’ aunts, other aunt expert in silky flowers, another aunt embroider, my grandmother a tailor... and three sisters! Because the remainder pieces of fabrics were the only material for art I had, I took them to the carpentry shop where the men, my father, grandfather, and an uncle worked as upholsterers and carpenters. There, I started nailing my pieces of fabrics to wood. My art creations were well celebrated by my family, and they decorated my room and my house. I kept doing those collages during all my elementary school. As a result, I have been doing collages with nailed fabrics since I can remember. 

Consequently, the pandemic new reality brought me back to my first love: the art with colors and textured fabrics. I am now creating art with common use materials with great visual and material value.