Profile of a Protagonist is a recurring blog post with the goal of showing readers how individuals in our Voice community engage in the Gospel and see God’s love lived out throughout Orlando. Meet the protagonists.

Meet Alejandro Ruiz

Tell me about yourself:

My name is Alejandro, aka Revel. I’m a live speed painter and a visual artist. I’ve been painting, full-time, for about 3 years now. I was a software engineer for about 4 years before I started painting. I went to college and I pursued something completely different because I didn’t have faith in myself as an artist.

I kind of lived life my way, as I thought of it, whatever felt good to me was what I went for. I didn’t have an intimate relationship with God. I knew about God but I didn’t know him. In 2012, I gave my life to Christ and I’ve never been the same since. I was at a revival at Faith Assembly and a preacher from LA, started talking about the Holy Spirit and I was baptized. I was spiritually on fire, and after that moment I was never the same. I started to paint again at my job and somebody saw one of my paintings and asked me to paint live at the church. At first I thought it wasn’t for me because I don’t like painting in front of people, but God was calling me outside of my comfort zone; so I stepped out and painted live for a fashion show. And ever since then it’s been event after event.

God has just been opening doors; and I am traveling the country now, painting live. It’s all to the glory of God, and that’s who I am, you know, a son. Jesus paid a price for me, to give mea hope, to give me a future, and to give me direction. All for me to have a relationship with Go, and it all came with surrendering to Him.
How do you see God in the city of Orlando?
I see God in the city of Orlando everywhere. Everywhere I go. I see God’s love, I see God’s love for people and their circumstances. Orlando has such a vast variety of people, in faith, in religions, cultures; and it’s just different. Whether I’m at the grocery store, at the mall, it doesn’t matter where I’m at. I’m always trying to see through God’s eyes of love, you know?
Jesus’ greatest commandment was to love God with all your heart, soul, & mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. And the only way to really do that is to love yourself and know who you are in Christ and that comes from loving God. To me, that’s how I see God in this city. He’s inside of us. As Christians we have that via the Holy spirit and He wants revival. It’s seeing people through the eyes of Jesus, wherever we’re at.
Where do you draw inspiration from in your art?
Basically my creative process is this:

1) The first step is to listen. I have to listen to God, no matter what the situation is. I’m always trying to listen to God; He’s always trying to talk to us and likes to communicate in different ways. Sometimes I get this cool idea from just looking at something cool in nature or just listening to something cool in scripture or reading.
2) Step 2 is to conceptualize it with a redemptive quality to it or with something that ties it to the gospel that I can present to people.
And then the last step is to execute it, which is always the hardest part for every artist, to execute the idea; and it takes time and effort.

What are some of the best things to happen at Artsy Cadence?
I think the greatest thing to happen at Artsy was seeing someone get delivered from suicide. This 13 year old kid that came to my class, we started off with worship music that day and he began to shake. I thought he was worshipping but then I realized that he was actually manifesting something; it didn’t feel right. I approached him and asked him if he was okay, and he started to cry and shake; saying how he wanted to kill himself. I told him to come to a corner of the room and he told me how he was planning to kill himself that night; and I was able to speak life to him and he was set free that day from suicide.
The reason that I lead that art class is for people to get set free.

What are some of your future dreams that you are working towards?
Eventually, I want to open up a non-profit that’s basically an art studio and I would have different artists showcase their art work. It would be a place for people to get set free and delivered; all prophetic art; and all proceeds would go to raising funds for different places that don’t have access to clean water. I also want it to be a place of not only visual art but a place where all sorts of creatives can get together and share ideas; and teach art classes to raise funds. It’s something that God has put on my heart, I don’t know what that looks like right now but I kind of have a goal that I want to do to bring that to light.

How has the Voice impacted your walk with Christ?

Yeah! The Voice changed my life completely. That’s when I first started coming to church. If it wasn’t for the Voice I wouldn’t be where I am today. It really brought me to God. It opened up a lot of revelation in my life about God’s love and the relationship that I have, is due to that. I love the Voice and what it does for college-age students and I’m happy, and blessed to be apart of it.