Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - Aware that each of us is gifted with the ability to experience the whole gamut of emotions - from ecstatic joy and passion to the depths of sadness and despair and back again - contemporary artist Alfonso Peña's latest works gently shake us out of complacency, transporting us through time and space to long forgotten memories and desires.

Alfonso is an artist by birth and an architect by trade. Hailing from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, he arrived in Puerto Vallarta in 1996. It was an artist friend of his who suggested he exhibit his art, which up to that point had been private: solely for himself, his family and friends.

He found representation in Annapolis, Maryland, at a gallery that so successfully unloaded his art that it continued to solicit his work. In Vallarta, his art hangs at Galeria Contempo, where he has been showing for the last two years.

"Everyone projects their own interior color," Peña says. "Yet since each human being is constantly transcending their limitations, their colors fluctuate. As does the green of nature, which is sometimes benevolent and sometimes not, just like our thoughts.

Peña graciously revealed the principal materials he used in composing his latest art works; bee's wax and resin (from trees or vegetables). He also uses oils, acrylic, knives and cut-outs from printed media.

"Always creating," this proponent of the lyric abstract expressionism school adds just the right touch of geometric abstraction into the mix, thanks to also being a talented architect. And along with his totally novel use of color, amongst the vehicles he uses to achieve this exciting inner stirring in us are resins, and encaustic applications.

"Most of my art depicts human relationships," he told me. "These days it's easy to see the fear that people have of each other. The times have changed from the days that we all knew each other and greeted one another when we passed each other on the street. It seems that these days we are all enclosed in our own particular boxy worlds."

"Everyone projects their own interior color," Peña says. "Yet since each human being is constantly transcending their limitations, their colors fluctuate. As does the green of nature, which is sometimes benevolent and sometimes not, just like our thoughts.

And on Friday, March 22nd, Galería Contempo warmly invites you to meet this affable, bilingual artist at an opening cocktail reception to be held from 6 to 10 pm in their airy two-story gallery located at Basilio Badillo 252 on the South Side of Puerto Vallarta.