Meet Felix Angel of Felix Angel in The Woodlands- BAG Online Art Gallery

Today we’d like to introduce you to Felix Angel.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Felix. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
When I was four years old a teacher in kindergarten asked what I wanted to be when grown up. I answered her “an architect and an artist”. I became both. Since early age I understood that I had received from life the gift of creativity, and it was up to me to fulfill my destiny. I also became a writer, a curator and a culture manager.

When I was 16 and still in high school, I begged my father to enroll me in the school of fine arts at night. The following year I was accepted at the school of architecture of the National University, in Medellin (Colombia, South America), the city where I was originally born.

I came to the United States to visit the museums and many art institutions right after graduation as an architect. I was already known in Colombia as a promising artist. I understood that to expand my possibilities and knowledge I had to take advantage of the many assets the United States has to foster art education. Eventually, I decided to stay and become an American citizen. The rest as the saying goes “is history”.

Passion is a quality any artist needs to realize his dream. That passion has taken me to many places in the world with my work and activities, and fuels the eagerness to face new challenges. An artist is a person that when he/she wakes up in the morning, feel he is not the same person he or she was the day before, neither the world we live in.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I do not think never is. It has its ups and downs.

The most difficult aspect of being an artist is being able to know when something one has created is good, solid, innovative enough, etc., visually, technically and conceptually, regardless of what people say. Sometimes opinion from other people may affect the way your work is received and perceived. Not always those opinions coincide with what you think yourself.

That is when your capacity for self-criticism plays such an important role in the process of accomplishing what you need to accomplish. No matter what, the artist needs to be resilient and develop an immense capacity to endure the negative. Oddly enough, when something goes well we feel indeed happy, but inside the mind, at that point, we are already concerned with whatever is next.

Felix Angel – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Art is something that people need in various ways, more or less, depending on their level of education and visual development. Every person is exposed daily to the arts to some degree, but not everyone reacts or is impacted in the same way.

Each artist sees the world and the interactions of society in a unique manner. The challenge is to open a door for others to appreciate such a vision and enrich their emotional and intellectual experience. From that perspective, there are not two artists alike, and that is what makes the arts such an exciting, competitive and complicated profession, and enjoyment for those who dare into such a dimension of life.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
From the point of view as an artist, success is related to a set of unconventional values when compared to what most people understand “success” means, a term associated usually with money and social standing.

In art success is related, for instance, to the capability to work in the appropriate space and environment, having access to the right materials, enough time to digress your own thoughts, developing the skills one requires to materialize ideas and confronting the work with the public.

Up to that point, regardless of what people think of your work, you may be considered successful as an artist. Being successful is equal to be able to produce your work. If an artist manages all that, he is indeed successful. Imagine a doctor who cannot practice medicine.

Having said that, if your work develop an appreciation among the critics and the knowledgeable, that is another degree of success, that does not necessarily relate to money. If on top of that your work attracts the interest of private collectors and institutions, the level of success is enhanced, but that alone does not imply that your work is good.

There are many artists who are well-known and collected, receive reviews in the media, and make lots of money, but are horrible artists, I would not consider those artists “successful”.