top of page
Oscar A. Lazo is a self-taught visual artist
working with diverse materials and techniques.
He grew up in Chile in a house of artists surrounded
by seamstresses, tailors, and upholsterers, which
helped develop his love for colors, textiles, and
carpentry tools. Lazo has earned a Biochemistry
degree from Concepcion University of Chile, followed
by a PhD degree in Biological Sciences, and he completed a Doctoral Thesis at the Medical University
of South Carolina in 1987. During his time in SC, he painted with acrylics and showed his paintings at art fairs and colleges. After moving to Boston in 1994 to work as Lecturer in Biochemistry at Harvard Medical School, Lazo won a second-place award in an art competition, further encouraging him to pursue his artistic work. Since then, he has continued to show his work in Colleges and Universities, Community Centers, Public Libraries, Art Galleries, and he has painted murals in Elementary and Middle schools. Currently, Lazo is adjunct faculty at Endicott College teaching math and science courses, and at Urban College of Boston where he teaches contemporary art. He continues to exhibit and sell his work at venues throughout New England.
About the artist
"Art has been a major part of my identity since childhod. I grew up in Chile in a house of artists. Being surrounded by seamstresses, tailors, and upholsterers helped to develop my love for colors, carpentry tools, and the feel of textiles. As an adolescent, I learned to paint with oils and later with acrylics. Those skills helped me to paint idyllic and romantic Caribbean and Japanese landscapes for commercial purposes. That work helped me afford the cost of my college tuition as a Biochemistry student at Concepcion University of Chile. During college I decorated windows, preschool buildings, designed theater sets, announcement posters for the office of Cultural Extension to Community, and painted ladies party dresses. I continued painting in acrylics during the years I completed my PhD degree in Biological Sciences. During my undergraduate and graduate studies, I was identified as the 'scientist artist' by professors, classmates, and later by my students. Humbly I may say, I retained the appellative, A Renaissance
Man after I moved to USA."
Artist Narrative
"It is well known that life is a circle, and my life is not an exception. Since the pandemic, I went back to my childhood game: to play with fabrics and nails. Why nails? During my childhood and according with the Chilean machoism idiosyncrasy, my father and grandfather forbid me to learn how to sew because it was considered a work for girls. In my birth house were two seamstress aunts, another aunt expert in silky flowers, another aunt embroiderer, and my grandmother a tailor. Because the remainder pieces of fabric were the only material for art I had, I took them to the carpentry shop where the men, my father, grandfather, and an uncle worked as upholsterers and carpenters. There I started nailing my pieces of fabrics to wood. My art creations were celebrated by my family and decorated my room and house. I continued those collages during all of elementary school. As a result, I have been doing collages with nailed fabrics since I can remember. Consequently, the pandemic new reality brought me back to my first love: art with colors and textured fabrics. I am now creating art with common materials with great visual and material value."
bottom of page