David Fernandez

"No eyes, just white spaces."

David Fernandez got a taste for art when the fury of fumes from the can settled like dew on his lips.  At fifteen, David and his brother, along with some friends, painted the streets of Oaxaca, Mexico.  Although, instead of painting by moonlight in dark clothes and ski caps, his group, Arte, was welcomed in broad daylight.  Those in the neighborhoods clamored for their next mural.  This larger-than-life graffiti literally gave life to an otherwise dying area.  They covered walls of broken down buildings with messages of hope, stories of the streets, but always with the beauty of a hero, a rescuer.  "I have always been very good at depicting loud aggressive facial expressions...Art has always been a window for me."  A freeing release of dreams via canvas, an entire wall, or a song.

David realized he had a knack for art by the time he reached 6th grade.  He tried his hand at a city-wide drawing contest among elementary students.  The task was Oaxaca's native pride and joy, President Benito Juarez.  He won first place and was offered a scholarship to an art school.  His parents weren't keen on the idea and decided it would be best for him to pursue the arts they viewed as beneficial.  They enrolled him in piano, which he tolerated, but yearned to play the guitar.  They gifted him a pair of top-of-the-line skates, in which he quickly sold to buy his first electric guitar and tiny amp to accompany it.  The only thing he lacked was a willing and excellent instructor that didn't charge for his services. 

He found exactly that in his childhood friend who not only knew how to play the guitar excellently, but who also happened to be blind.  He had grown up in the orphanage that his father's church operated and was the first orphan to call it home. David saw music in an entirely new light.  The wind whistled in this new opened window, and blew the sheet music of the piano lessons to the back of his mind.  He learned to play solely by sounds and the variations of the vibration pulsing through his fingertips.  He couldn't get enough, and would practice for hours on end, most days tallying up at least six.

David and his brother started up a metal band that promoted a drug-free, non-violent lifestyle that attracted so many youth to his father's church, they outnumbered the adults by over one hundred.  They began teaming up with other bands, performing at downtown squares and drawing some 2,500 attendees per night.  The government contacted the band with an offer to fund the concerts if they would just keep offering that positive message to the city's youth.  By the third year, bands from the United States and as far as New Zealand were flown in to join the collaborative concerts on the government's dime.  They received an invitation to the U.S. to record their first album.  Everything was in place, planned out, packed, and ready to go, but God had other plans, their visa was denied.  In utter disappointment, he re-lived the same moment when the art school painfully slipped from view. 

David went back to school and worked on finishing up his graphic design degree.  The band never fully recovered from the blow and they all agreed it would be best to hand it off to the next generation of passionate artists that might ignite the flame back into it.  On the other hand, surrendering the band life gave him much more time to pursue the beautiful American girl that came with her dad every summer to help out at the orphanage.  She was eight when she spent her first summer carrying a different mother-less baby on her hip each hour.  It was another eight years before David took notice of her and coincidentally, his volunteering at the orphanage increased considerably.  They married in Mexico in 2007 and had two children of their own, a girl and then a boy and felt God had plans for them back in the United States.  A visiting pastor from the Midwest invited them to stay at a home just across the street from his church.  This time, his visa was approved.  After just four months of calling the U.S. home, David and his wife found out they were expecting their third child.  Halfway into the pregnancy they were told that the baby had severe heart and brain malformations.  His daughter was born at a children's hospital, known for their premiere pediatric heart center, just a few hours away from their home. 

As he sat next to her bedside, barely able to see any exposed skin, every inch covered in tubes and tape, he found himself utterly disappointed with God once again.  Surgery after surgery, missing death by mere  millimeters and milliseconds, he sat and watched, and no prayers escaped his lips.  After two weeks in a lost daze, he found a few art supplies at the hospital.  He began to sketch and in the months that followed, in this white, sterile and sanitized home away from home, God revealed Himself in those renderings.  All the things that had happened to him over the years that seemed like disappointments were actually His Hands sketching the direction and will for his life.  David's apology to His Maker and Keeper became the awakening of his art.

"No more white spaces, the eyes are filled."  

David now plays for The Ancient Plan, follow him and his band on facebook for upcoming concert dates!