Luis Moreno began drawing his Invisible Men series after taking an eight-year sabbatical from drawing. The self-taught artist from Alhambra, CA, began the series with Vallejo, a homeless man pushing two shopping carts full of his belongings.
Moreno’s series forces the cognitive dissonance of confronting the unspoken reality that we live in a society that willingly abandons others. Issues of social justice and inequity flood this series, and the viewer recalls the faces of homeless men and women on city streets so commonly walked. Moreno dramatically captures lone figures throughout downtown Los Angeles, telling their story with one of art’s earliest mediums, charcoal. Scholars believe that early cave paintings were drawn with charcoal: a simple art utensil made from burnt sticks.
The medium and the message of Moreno’s work can only be viewed as intentional. Prehistoric survival and Social Darwinism are smudged into these illustrations as the artist dares to acknowledge those who society chooses to ignore.
Moreno’s artistic process begins with going outside and taking photographs throughout downtown Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. His subjects are not exoticized but humbly depicted as nomadic travelers and forgotten men who are judged with cold black and white societal standards, but whose untold stories exist in the grey hues on the page.
- Dulcinea Art Gallery
- 20" x 15" Charcoal, Charcoal Pencils, Pastels on illustration Board.
27.5” x 39.5" Charcoal, pastels (background) on Illustration Board
