The wind tugged at my sweater as I crossed the empty Kohlberg courtyard. Over Fall Break, Swarthmore felt quiet, broken only by footsteps, rustling leaves, and a grey sky pressing down. I was making my way towards Whittier to visit the studio of Chris Guerrero Beltrán’s ’26. Thinking back to painting II: figure and composition, the class we took together a couple of semesters ago, I wondered how their work had evolved since.
Stepping inside Whittier 207 offered a shift in energy. The shared studio — home to four other senior art majors — sat suspended in quiet potential as Chris darted around, moving between their space from a backdrop setup to their reference board, showing me the lighting setup and photography props they liked to use. They fiddled with their Nikon D610 — pulling the strap on, off, then back on again — as they settled into the interview.
Turning to their wall of studies revealed a consistent focus to me: bold color and sharp lights. Pieces I saw to be “simple but effective”: strong, saturated colors and high-contrast lighting that captured attention. Even in figure painting, their canvases leaned toward clarity over complexity. Now, that simplicity carried more experience and intention: color wasn’t merely just for decoration, it was the language of their canvas. “Honestly, I feel like my style comes in through color,” Chris said. “It might be more subconscious. I don’t go in thinking, ‘I want to express this.’ It just comes through.”
Chris’s courses in architecture and sculpture helped them sharpen that sense of form, giving structure to what might otherwise dissolve into pure sensation. They note that key lessons from these courses carry over into their current work. For Chris, architecture became a bridge between their two majors — art and computer science — allowing them to connect aspects of emotion and logic between them. “I think architecture showed me how structure in work can still carry feeling,” they reflected.
On one wall of their studio hangs a cluster of recent photographs. Their subjects were friends, posed under different lighting conditions ranging from soft warm tones to harsh backlit lighting. The atmosphere of these portraits was created by mist from a spray bottle or colored light filtered through cellophane. One portrait glows with translucent soft pink and baby blue — hues that hint at identity without explicitly declaring it. “I think it’s helpful to look for the story,” Chris said. “It’s not like I’m intentionally looking for trans people. It’s more subconscious. Like how we identify these figures and stereotypes we sometimes project onto them.”
Right next to these portraits hung another study of identity, this time, a collection of reflections: fragments of Chris’s own face, caught in the door of the Science Center, or shimmering faintly in a puddle after rain. “There’s that extra layer of having to position myself in a way where the camera also captures me,” they said. “It takes more time, aligning myself, shifting the angle. I have to take the environment into account too.” Chris plops a mirror down on their easel. “It’s different than just having a mirror in front of you.” That intention to remain visible, even peripherally, feels like an unspoken theme of their current studies. Chris isn’t merely documenting light; they’re testing the boundary between observer and subject, between seeing and being seen.
Chris works collaboratively with their subjects, giving them a voice in how they are presented, seemingly aiming to capture more than just the subject, but also the relationship between artist and subject itself through the medium of photography. “I’ve been giving them a lot of control because I want to make sure they’re comfortable. Sometimes I suggest colors or lighting, but other times I just see where they want to go.” It mirrors how they interact with reflective surfaces in their own self-portraits: a dynamic give and take between artist and environment, both shaping the outcome. “These photographs about identity — it’s kind of hard,” they admit. “I want this recognition of a feeling, and then it’s like, how do I do that? Drawing from these feelings is really important for me.”
A black-and-white photography assignment once forced Chris to strip away color entirely, leaving light and shadow to carry the image. “Color was not an option. You’re limited, and there’s just not a lot to go from,” they said. “That’s why I started focusing a lot on shadows.” Chris explained how the experience changed his perception: “It made me think — okay, now that I’ve worked in black and white, how far can I push color? Before, I was kind of scared to go too saturated. But now, having that basis of dark and light, it’s like — how far can I take it?” In their work, color and light operate in tandem. One red might convey “threatening energy,” another “sensuality”; one blue might evoke calm, another sharpness. The choices feel instinctive yet deliberate, balancing technical precision with intuition.
As we chatted, I reflected on the contrast between our approaches. My own work favors subdued tones, letting atmosphere and subtlety convey emotion. Chris’s work speaks in saturated declarations, allowing color as presence shine, letting light as voice sing. And yet, beneath that contrast, we seemingly share the same pursuit: translating feeling into form, and allowing visual elements to express what words can not.
As our conversation wound down, Chris reflected on how their path into art began later than most. They hadn’t initially planned to major in it and only began serious art classes after arriving at Swarthmore. Over time, their focus sharpened, weaving painting and photography into a cohesive exploration of light and color, two mediums that inform and echo each other. In both, Chris uses color and illumination not just as a technique, but as a way to explore whatever themes rise naturally in their process: identity, reflection, or the fleeting balance between structure and feeling.
By the time I left the art studio, the grey outside had lifted slightly. The campus felt faintly altered, as if some of Chris’s color had lingered after a brush stroke, or camera shutter, softening the air. Their work doesn’t call for attention; it quietly reshapes perception. In the interplay between light and shadow, observer and subject, Chris reminds us that art is not only what we see, but how seeing shapes us in return.
