Colombian-born artist Ortiz-Hernández has been working for more than three decades, and has maintained studios in New York City and Bogota, Colombia.
The drawings have evolved over time but always remain complex, multi-layered creations made with a variety of materials including pencil, colored pencil, and charcoal.
“One looks at these drawings but also into them, into their many layers, and into their history,” noted Gregory Volk, a contributing editor at Art in America. “Ultimately, while Ortiz-Hernández’s near-fanatical drawings are all about surfaces, they also have a great deal of depth, both literally and psychologically. . . . How Ortiz-Hernández achieves this look is through exquisite and fastidious control, but the effect on the viewer is liberating and open-ended.”
Ortiz-Hernández herself notes, “There is no ‘story’ in this work, no reliance on nature, no human figure. The source is from within. Each gesture, each mark, has to be sought, each form to be discovered. Through unwavering attention, the artist begins to see, to abandon familiar notions, to accept—without hindrance and free of prejudice—the image as it comes. Because doubt is always present and false starts happen, the work is made slowly...the attention of the artist tightly engaged with the emerging purpose of the drawing...”
Her sculpture, using steel, wood, wax, and other materials, evoke a deep response from the viewer through a fine sensitivity to issues of mass, weight, proportion, balance, form, clarity of line, and restraint. Even at small scales, the impression is of strength and great presence.