The first cowboys were Black Americans and Mexicans, José Valverde says over the phone. The word cowboy comes from vaquero, meaning man who takes care of cows (vaca is cow in Spanish, and –ero as a suffix indicates one who performs an action).
For Valverde, this is a fact that resonates with him — a fact that’s often forgotten, but one that carries a legacy of freedom and agency. As such, in his spare time, he teaches kids about this history through his mentorship with Southern Blues Equestrian Center’s BridgeUP: GiddyUP, which uses horseback riding as a tool for youth development. “Healing through knowledge,” he calls it.
This, too, is how he approaches his art: reflecting on his cultural past to assert his identity, as in his show, “Origins,” on display at the Urban Art Commission. “ You can’t really move forward until you go back to where you come from,” Valverde says. “Sometimes we don’t wanna look at our past because sometimes it might be hurtful, it might be something you wanna forget, but it’s that task that helps us move forward and understand and heal from the difficulties that we have experienced throughout our life, and the one that teaches us to be stronger.”
Growing up as a Mexican-American in Memphis, Valverde says he searched for an identity his “whole youth and most of my adult life,” as he teetered between two cultural worlds, not truly rooted in either. But there was always art to hold him over, in some way. “I used to just draw because I was diagnosed autistic when I was 5 years old, and so I felt like if I didn’t have something in my hand and a piece of paper, I wasn’t really happy,” he says. “So every time I would just draw whatever, and I was able to grow.”
Those black-and-white drawings carried him through most of his young life until about 2017. “After some rough times, I felt like painting would be the answer for it,” Valverde says now. “My inspiration was a sunset from New Mexico.”
Valverde needed color — bright, bold, shiny colors of sunsets, of indigenous headdresses with feathers and textiles, of luchador masks, of halos encircling the Virgin Mary, the colors of his Native and Mexican heritage. “[Painting] brought me back to my culture to understand where I come from, who I am, my ancestors, the people before me and everything they have fought for and done for me to be able to express myself and showcase the beauty of my traditions.”
When he paints these colorful subjects, he studies them, learns the histories, the legends, the folklore, the nuances. “ I call my art ‘art from the heart’ because everything that I paint has a story to it. … I feel like that is my way of portraying the beauty of my life, the passion of my life, and who I have become,” he says. “ I was very close-minded and now I have grown into seeing things in a different perspective and allowing love to be the reason why I do things instead of a black-and-white perspective.”
He wants his art to resonate with viewers, his story to encourage empathy and sympathy, especially in a time when the Latino community is under heightened discrimination. “We can use art as a medium of coming together and finding community,” he says. “People need to understand that at some point we were all part of that immigration.”
“My goal is to tell artists that are upcoming and every other artist basically that is Latino descent, that it’s okay for us to protest everything that’s going on,” he adds, “because our culture matters, our traditions matter. This country was built on immigration, legal and illegal.
“[Art is] the purest form of resistance — to show that you’re here and that you’re of who you are regardless of what country you’re from and what country you are in. … Me doing this, it’s a way to speak for those people who have no voice, who are intimidated, and who have no way of being represented.”
It’s for his community, Valverde says. The same community that accepted him as an artist before he even saw himself as one. “I am nothing without community — there’s no music, there’s no art, there’s no nothing. So we must protect our community, so they feel safe.”
To celebrate his “Origins” exhibit, Valverde will host an artist’s talk from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, November 7th. There will be refreshments, music, lowriders, and Aztec dancers. On Saturday, November 15, 9 a.m.-1 p.m., all are also invited to a community workshop at Southern Blues Equestrian Center to learn more about the connection Native Americans and Black Americans shared with horses before and after the colonization of America.
“Origins” is on view through November 17th at the Urban Art Commission. Follow Valverde on Instagram @carlosval28.