Drew Trujillo, Ribbons: Velvet Flower, 2020, giclée; 24″x36″
Drew Trujillo, aka Dr. Woohoo, lives near Albuquerque’s Old Town. He is an interdisciplinary artist, a 15th generation New Mexican with Spanish, Mexican, and Puebloan ancestors. Trujillo was born and grew up in Albuquerque, a city founded at the rancho of his 10th great grandfather, Diego de Trujillo. He has lived in Santa Fe, throughout California, Northeast US, Toronto, and Nova Scotia. His color inspiration comes from Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, Georgia O’Keeffe, and the Color field paintings by Kenneth Noland. Additional inspiration includes the symmetry and symbolism of Chacoan Black-on-White ceramics; the precision of Vera Molnár’s drawing machines; The chaos of Jackson Pollock’s gestural abstract brush strokes; Craig Reynolds’s emergent behavior algorithms; and the screenprints Rauschenberg and Warhol.
Trujillo develops custom color and painting applications that seamlessly merge video games, video and generative art, computer vision, drawing machines, stencils, and screenprinting. The process is often a collaboration between the participant interacting with the semi-autonomous personalities of the brushes.
Trujillo is self-taught, having worked with Adobe to create its plug-in architecture for Photoshop and Illustrator, and as the Director of Tech for diverse companies, including ~3 years at Meow Wolf. He has taught Processing and programming for Photoshop and Illustrator. Recently accepted into the MFA program at UNM, his focus is on Experimental Arts and Technology and Chicana/o Studies.
Trujillo was on the Board for the Santa Fe Art Institute, and a member of the Santa Fe Complex Advisory Council & Founders Circle, Gray Area (GAFFTA), and CODAME ART + TECH.