The artist Ppmid jokes that his home city of Mérida — in the Yucatán state of Mexico — is like living “next door to hell” and it makes him want to move to Canada or Japan someday. Nevertheless — even though he’d like to move someday — Mérida is where he created a life for himself and his family with his art. Ppmid, or Pepe Rodríguez, believes that being able to pursue art for a living is one of his greatest accomplishments.

However, he admits that working from home can also be a double-edged sword because he finds it difficult to “sit down and work without interruptions.” He says that there is always “something fun” happening around him and that he must resist being distracted by it. However, he sets boundaries for himself and insists that his work never exceed more than 8 hours a day.

Pepe teases that the one thing we should know about him is that — like a gremlin — he should not be fed after midnight. However, he also shares that if his art style were edible it would be something so tasty that not even he could resist it after midnight. He says his work is like a delicious bowl of ramen soup that is “warm cozy and challenging” but that it also invokes a sense of “familiarity” for his audience.

Ppmid shares that his current work is only “complete” once he is inspired to create something new and when he can’t resist the pull of a new project. He looks to people like the Mexican filmmaker, Guillermo del Toro, for inspiration because he admires the way that he has achieved success even with a “different vision of the world.” In the future, he hopes that his own art style is able to embrace a similar sense of freedom from expectation and it will become “more childish, more free and with less worries.”