Caroline Picard interviews painter Candida Alvarez on the occasion of the exhibition Candida Alvarez: mambomountain at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, on view through March 24, 2013.

Alvarez comments: "I see in shapes. Colors are the building blocks. I have an archive of pictures, drawings, photographs, postcards, letters, and art history books that I riff from. My working process allows for these shapes to be pulled apart and subverted. The wrestling that ensues becomes the drawing coming face-to-face with the painting. I am seduced by color that lives in the world. I like bright color against dark, rough texture against smooth and shiny against mat. I don’t like to think of my shapes as borders. Stained glass windows were some of my earliest experiences of looking at something two-dimensional."