I believe my preferred personal aesthetic is the beach cowboy style; a mix between a mountain cabin/house and a tropical or seafaring style. I grew up near the coast of Venezuela in South America; I was an hour away from the beach and fifteen minutes away from the coastal mountain. My hobbies  related mostly to outdoor-type activities such as hiking, camping, surfing, fishing, and SCUBA diving. My parents bought an apartment at the beach, it was decorated with all sorts of tropical ornamentation: clamshells, palms, bamboo, sea-glass, fish designs, etc.

It was a nice way to relax and get away from the modern and urban lifestyle of the city. My parents, especially my father, have always been very passionate about art. However, unlike me, my parents are into modern art. I believe it was the overwhelming modern style decoration in my childhood home that strayed me from modern and post-modern art. As a child, I could not understand what value or appeal my parents saw in those pieces. Growing older, I tried to better understand the appeal, but the style would not capture me. I had also acquired a better understanding of money, however, I could not understand why my parents would pay large sums of money for a piece of art that I could not find in any way appealing; some of the pieces even scared me. As I mentioned, the tropical aesthetic of our beach house was in its own way an escape from the modern style which I could not understand nor come to like. Here are some of the works of art in my home in Venezuela.

You can see how as a kid I was scared by all the sculptures in my house and grew to dislike modern aesthetics. As the years passed and I moved to the United States, I kept liking and preferring the tropical aesthetic; even with other aspects of my life, I would integrate the tropical aesthetic into my lifestyle. I was that person walking around in flip-flops, a tank top, and swim shorts even though I was not going to the beach or a pool; I had a shark-shaped bottle opener on my keychain and my favorite type of beer was a Corona Extra with a lime wedge. After a few years living in the U.S. and boasting about my past as a fisherman with Guy Harvey and Columbia shirts, my friends recommended I tried hunting as a hobby. I became obsessed with this new sport and decided to make it a part of my lifestyle as well. I was now captured between two worlds: the mountains and the sea. My apparel consisted of swim shorts with flip flops in the summer and in the winter it was jeans, cowboy boots, and flannels. My allegiance to both sides made me realize I prefer the beach cowboy aesthetic. I don’t even know if this aesthetic has a formal definition, I tried finding things related to it on the internet, but nothing came up. The best way of defining this aesthetic is with the style represented by country singers such as Kenny Chesney, Zach Brown, and others like them… In a way, I am a flip-flop cowboy!

Here’s Jonny Waters & Company better describing this personal aesthetic.

Furthermore, a video by Kenny Chesney describes the No Shoes Nation’s way of life:

Here is a link to “Uncanny: The Dolls of Mariana Monteagudo” a documentary by Film Maker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OLhgAOQF4w