Ramon Mejia

By Nicole Donner

To create art in an abstract, non-representative form takes an eye for shapes and a taste for the unusual. Painting student Ramon Mejia, has created several representative and non-representative art for the Visual Art Student Show.

In one of his pieces, “Us vs. Them,” Mejia takes shapes of the organic, such as trees and leaves, and combines them with shapes from the inorganic like rectangles and squares. The result is a message to accept what is around us and not fight it.

“Some people have the mentality that nature is something to be conquered, something to be fought or something to be tamed,” says Mejia, “opposed to something to live alongside or to share or co-exist with. The two elements representative, one is bone, one is bamboo stick, and I tried to include elements from both.

“[The piece] represents the meeting of humans and natural places [in] what a lot of people refer to as nature,” said Meija.

Another piece he’s working on is based on a story he read in one of his writing classes called, “The Lottery” about a society that separates empathy and guilty from the yearly murders and hangings they commit with such causality. The painting is of a young girl, flying a missile like a kite. Mejia interpreted the meaning of the story and relates it to true-life events.

“There’s a disconnect between a lot of Americans and the war,” says Mejia. “We idealize our society as the good guy and we don’t actually see [how] capable [we are] of some pretty horrible things.”

Beginning his college career at Seattle Central Community College, he took his first college level art class at MHCC with instructor Lori Lorion in 2005. While majoring in journalism to “pay the bills,” Mejia continues to contribute a lot of his time to his art. He is in the midst of creating 20 pieces of one style in hopes of being accepted by a local art gallery.

“Most artists usually work a second job to pay bills,” said Mejia. “It would be very difficult to make a living selling my paintings.”