The Beginning
The day I received a phone call from my mother telling me to hurry home because my father was having trouble breathing, I knew the day had finally arrived. As I drove, I could barely concentrate. My mind was filled with uncertainty because I didn't know what I was about to witness.
The moment I entered my parents' room, everything became silent.
My father lay motionless in bed, his eyes and mouth still open. My mother had reached him first. She held his chest, shaking him gently as she called his name.
"Gómez... Gómez?"
I walked over, wrapped my arms around my mother, and gently pulled her back.
Through tears, I whispered,
"It's okay, Mom... he's no longer suffering."
As we cried together, something happened that I could not understand.
The grief I expected never came.
Instead, I felt... nothing.
The silence inside me frightened me more than the loss itself. I questioned everything.
Did I really love my father?
Later, my wife came to be with my mother, and after calling my brother and sister, they arrived as well.
After making sure everyone was together, I told my family I had to leave for work. My wife and I own two small business, and life demanded that we continue.
The entire day felt strangely ordinary.
I worked.
I spoke with customers.
I smiled when I had to.
Yet inside, there was only emptiness.
I didn't know it then, but my mind had entered shock. It was protecting me from a loss too overwhelming to process all at once.
Days later, that silence began to change.
The emotions I could not speak...
The questions I could not answer...
The grief I could not understand...
Began to take shape through images.
Artifex Visionum was never created as a business.
It was never created to sell artwork.
It was born as a conversation with my own grief.
As I began sharing those images, something unexpected happened. People started recognizing pieces of themselves within them. They saw their own memories, losses, fears, and hopes reflected back to them.
That is how Artifex Visionum was born.
