Artist 5: Victor Castillo

I found his website online today, and I fell in LOVE this artist! A lot. Like you don't even understand.
Besides how wonderfully creepy and colorful it all is, everything in his work is symbolic. I love symbolism! Looking at his art I imediately understood a lot of the symbols. His pieces tell a story of corrupted beauty. He takes very beautiful colors and styles, and innocent, fun, and humorous cartoon characters, and twists them to bring attention to the rampant greed, lust and vanity of our society. His pieces are all about the way that people use others to get what they want, knowingly or unknowingly. An interesting thing I noticed is that often both the dominant character and the victim are smiling.

Even after looking at his paintings and seeing all of that I was so curious and I wanted to know more. (Which is  a good thing!) I found an interview where he explained some more of the symbolism. Especially his creepy vintage cartoon characters. Their vacant eye sockets represent ignorance, their long sausage noses allude to Pinocchio and represent a culture built on lies and fleshly desires. He chooses children as his main characters, because he says children are often cruel without realizing it and he believes that we often are the same. He also mentioned that he thinks it is so fake how everyone is always smiling in magazine pictures and on TV, because you know everyone isn't always that happy. So, I'm guessing that's why all his characters are always smiling.

In conclusion, he is my new favorite.
Here is his link definitely check his page out!