ANGELA & GABRIEL COLLAZO

“If you’re taking the time to read this, then the connection with the spirit of the artwork has already been made. You have felt the power and the passion that inhabits the artists.

Gabriel and Angela Collazo have been partners in love and in life for fifteen years.
Angela is an interior designer with a keen eye for elegant yet simple refinement. Hers is an innate talent, a natural sophistication manifested in each work with a fine sense of style, scale, and color. Gabriel, an artist in every sense of the word, creates with purpose using paint, texture, layers, music, and drums, all of which are imbued with light and love. If you watched their videos, you felt their combined creative souls.

Their fire ritual is a rebirth that represents the purifying effect that the Spirit of God—who is described as fire—desires to have upon this plane. Its presence is manifested in every piece they create.  

In Gabriel’s words: “People are going to pass by our artwork. Some will keep walking, but some will stop and seek a relationship with us. They will want to own that connection; that love; a blessed work of art full of positive energy. They will crave to display it in their home so that they can bathe in that loving energy every single day.”

— Gabriel and Angela Collazo

REVOLUTIONARY LOVE

Love must be a constant action. This world sees love as something that one merely feels and receives, but love is much more dynamic than that. Love is an action, a decision, a gift that must be constantly given away. The human experience is incomplete without the connections of spirits altruistically yearning to provide authentic adoration to one another.

Love can be subtle. It can be grand. It can be difficult. But overall, love must be given. There is no point to love at all if love itself is not freely and generously given away. This Revolutionary Love series proclaims that a world filled with love is reckoning, and it is our purpose to answer our call to duty; our call to give love. There are different elements of the human experience sprinkled throughout these pieces. Our hope is that when you see them, you can latch on and receive the love which we have given and that you can then give it back to the world and back to those around you.

We have created these pieces out of the love from which we have been freely given. The texture within the circular voids in the works perfectly exemplifies our love's literal labors and efforts within these pieces. We were testing mediums to use for the background in this piece. We wanted it to show age, to show wear, and to look like it had been through tough times; been walked on; been stepped on just like we all have been. Nothing was quite fitting the bill. Simply mimicking an aged texture wasn't authentic enough. Then, Angela looked down to the floor beneath her feet and was struck by an ironic, obvious solution: "Let's cut up the ground we walk on!" You see, in our studio, we laid down old, used linoleum on the floor to shield the bare ground from our artistry, and we have been painting on top of it for years.

It was perfect! Not only was it texturally amazing and naturally worn, but it was also completely and utterly us. We have walked on this floor, created on this floor, and have been struck by inspiration while standing on this very floor, and now, there is a piece of it embedded in the core of these works. In this series, we aim to infuse the idea that love is an action— one that must be taken— and we have put our physical embodiment of art, our act of love, into each piece and given it to you.

We have given ourselves wholeheartedly to this work and to the Spirit within our lives which prompts us to love others. Our spirits are catalysts of change, but we must decide to give life and love. We must remember that love doesn't need to be constantly striking, but it does need to be constant and everlasting— and that constancy is a choice. We have faith that this world will decide to build upon that truth. Holding onto love doesn't make it accrue interest but paying interest to the subtleties of the people who surround you pays off.

PURE LOVE

In the midst of darkness, in the chasm of life, and in the chasm of these paintings, Pure Love bursts forth. The hearts break through the handmade fiber resin canvases and radiate color and life. When driven by pure love, there is nothing for the heart to do but explode with the insatiable power which it has been bestowed. Pure love cannot be confined and must give itself away.

This pure, insatiable love must be freely given because it can not be confined to the constructs of our confused hearts. Thus, bursting forth from the bright heart is the love which cannot be contained. The eruptions of vibrant colors on these canvases are a direct reflection of how love strikes our dry hearts and creates a surging river. We have been gripped by love and have grabbed onto it in return, thus, the textures in these pieces can represent tangible feelings, graspable kinesthetics for abstract concepts like joy, warmth, and collision of spirits. The concept of Pure Love is loaded with such power, and it will bleed into every aspect of life if you will follow its lead. In our art we are giving and displaying a physical embodiment of what has manifested within us because, as G. K. Chesterton said, "one cannot love without giving."

Unadulterated expressions of the heart can only be made into coherent concepts by the spirit of pure love. We cannot attain this standard of perfect, untainted love because we cannot even fathom how boundless life would be if pure love truly and completely infiltrated our hearts and minds. As artists, we can only depict what our hearts have experienced when this beauty has truly touched our lives. This series portrays the striking love which Collazo Collections aims to make pervasive in every arena of our existences. We know that love takes work. Love takes understanding. Love is a choice just as much as love is an insurmountable swelling of emotion. This is why we approach life with servants' hearts; hearts which are willing to pour out that which they have received; hearts that give love even when the outpouring of love may seem to dwindle into a dull trickle. We must love despite ourselves. We believe that when we live life with open hearts for understanding and open arms for others, then we will be acting out of pure love. What else can our hearts do but overflow their love into the world? This series is bold, bursting, and sparkling with the effervescent spirit of perfect love, and we hope that you can internalize all that it represents.

ABSTRACTS

Abstract is about the adventure and the difficulty that comes with trudging through this murk and overwhelming tension in the world. We were inspired by how God breathed over the vast darkness of the earth to bring forth life; to bring forth brightness! The texture, depth, and layering of colors portray the journey of battling everyday negativity, and the final product shows the peaks of brightness and hope in the midst of everyday valleys.