Blue Hues presents a five-year exploration of South Central-based artist Uber Lopez Enamorado. His artistic practice was initially informed by early childhood trips to the Getty Museum, where he was surrounded by the masterworks of Caravaggio, Goya, and Rembrandt. There, the artist understood the importance of portraiture painting and how it created power for both the sitter and the important stories of the people during that time. Since the unexpected loss of his brother in 2019, Uber has devoted himself to producing a series of works sourced from family archives that characterize his sibling's influence on his work. His connection to the archive of photographs and his canvas highlights the push and pull of fragmented memory and the present moment. Throughout this series, Lopez Enamorado seeks images containing dynamic compositions, obscure qualities, and facial expressions that provoke conversation and offer a window into the artist's upbringing. He draws influence from western iconography and colors, such as the spectrum of blue, which holds significance in many cultures for its strenuous development process and deeper connotations when brought into the artist's hand. For Uber, blue functions as an entendre, containing deeper connotations relating to territorial divides and the untold narratives of specific South Central upbringings. Adopted techniques from Rembrandt's early self-portraits, such as the blue overcast, can be found in many of Uber's figurative works, where they symbolize grief and survivor's guilt. His process incorporates various layers of acrylic washes, established placement of control, and loose gestural mark-making. This is followed by soft blends using an airbrush gun and spray cans, nodding back to the pillars and engagements outside traditional art spaces. As he finalizes the work in oil, Uber strategically preserves the raw qualities of his beginning stages to develop a push-and-pull effect, creating tension between reality and illusion. He carves out a new space that invites memories and the reminiscence of life within the canvas.