The friendly Dream Monster is making its appearance once again, being spray painted across multiple areas of El Paso. The creative consultant and director of Cool Things Creative and creator of Dream Monster, Matthew Martinez, has brought back his beloved mural of Dream Monster after a six-year hiatus from art.
As a child, Martinez found his passion for art. Since then, his art developed in the streets of Los Angeles, California and El Paso.
“I had a lot of allergies growing up, so when everyone would go outside during class, I would stay in during recess and I would be drawing cartoon characters and people would come in and like them and they’d ask me to give it to them,” said Martinez.
From then on, Martinez started charging his classmates for his drawings, and since then, Martinez has continued to stick with his art.
Martinez spent some of his life in Los Angeles where he worked and excelled in his artistry.
“I lived in LA for many years,” said Martinez. “In LA, I was doing really well with my art, and I was excelling with it. I had a large following, I was doing street art, graffiti and stuff like that, but I was also selling a lot of my art in galleries.”
Throughout all this, Martinez was spray painting murals of Dream Monster. After being bored by the limitation of tagging his name on walls, he said he came up with the piece, a representation of everything he has gone through in life.
Martinez created a gallery called the Dream Chasers Club in 2015 where local artists were able to showcase and sell their art.However, after the gallery closed, Martinez said it left a bad taste in his mouth in creating art which led to his six-year hiatus.
Martinez’s wife and mother both would tell him that he would one day get back to art, which he was at first reluctant to but now is perusing it once again.
“I think the Dream Monster really just represents everything I’ve gone through,” said Martinez. “That’s the cultural relevance for it, it might not be exactly what you think of as a cultural art piece, but to me it is, it represents a Hispanic artist.”
After taking his hiatus from art, he has brought back Dream Monster for El Pasoans to enjoy.
“It’s really exciting to see that a lot of people who knew about it years ago are excited to see it again and I’m really excited to see people that never knew about it and are equally excited to discover something new,” said Martinez.
Martinez’ newest mural is being showcased at the Del Norte Courts Motel at 4015 Alameda. He also has many more murals across the Sun City.
Avery Escamilla-Wendell is a contributor for The Prospector and may be reached at [email protected] or on Instagram @by_avery_escamilla.
