Inspired by traditional Saltillo Serapes (blanket/cloak), which dates back to Pre-Columbian Mexico, as an exploration of the Mexican American cultural experience. “Way back, in the sixties, when I was in college, I would sneak into a prof’s office and sit there rapt, looking through his art magazines. I ran across the work of Gene Davis, the “stripe” painter. For the first time in my life, before any cultural notions of “Chicano” were on the horizon, I reacted to works of contemporary art from a cultural standpoint. ‘These are like serapes!’ I said to myself...Eventually, during my last year in college, I started doing some hard-edge “masking tape” paintings that were nothing like serapes or the Davis “stripe paintings” though that technique did inform what I was trying to do and years later, the technique led me to my own Serape series.” – César A. Martínez