Passion, Persistence, and Paint
Artist Virginia Vilchis. Photo
Manhattan Beach artist Virginia Vilchis draws her subjects from within
The paintings of Virginia Vilchis tend to be bright and dark at the same time. By bright I mean colorful, and by dark I mean somber, with an alluring gravitas. Combined with mixed media and a texture so prevalent we may want to run our fingers over the surface of her work, the Manhattan Beach artist creates pictures that are bold and compelling.
But how did they originate and from where did they emerge?
“For people to understand my art,” Vilchis says, “they really have to understand my life and my background and what I have come through.”
Born in San Juan de las Tablas, Mexico, in 1980, Vilchis was raised by her grandparents and only in 1994 did she move to Bakersfield to rejoin her mother. Although many things grow on trees in Bakersfield, money is not one of them, and while attending high school Vilchis held down as many as three jobs at once: “I worked in Burger King, McDonald’s, and I worked in a jewelry store,” she says. “And I would do my homework in the middle of the night, then get up in the morning and go to school.” During the summers she worked in the fields.
Not an auspicious beginning, and many young people would be set on a path towards cynicism and disillusionment. Somehow, Vilchis didn’t lose her faith in a better life.
Not only was she the only one among her five siblings to finish high school, she was also the first one to attend college, and she graduated from Syracuse University in 2011 with a BFA. So far, most of her shows have been on the East Coast, but a solo exhibition called “Expressions” opens in Anaheim in just over a week.
“Once in a Dream,” by Virginia Vilchis
A viable career?
Although she had been fond of art since she was a child, Vilchis initially avoided it as a serious pursuit “because I felt it wasn’t going to provide me with a steady income. So I fought it for a long time.” A seemingly sensible decision from someone who knew firsthand the difficulty of getting by in life with very little money.
However, she recalls the time when one of her professors, Steven Hudson, of Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois, approached her and posed an important question.
“He came to my desk and said, So what is your major? What do you want to be? And I said, Oh, I want to be a dentist. He looked at me and said, Are you doing this for the money? And I said yes.” Vilchis laughs and continues. “And he said, If you really do that you’re going to be unhappy for the rest of your life, and it’s going to be a waste of talent. So you better think what do you really want for your future?”
“Still Standing,” by Virginia Vilchis
It may seem like a careless remark to a student who’s been concerned about a stable financial future (because art and stability ride two different ponies), but he’d clearly seen a great deal of promise in the young woman.
I’m guessing that Vilchis heard similar words of praise on a number of occasions. Even in high school, she says, teachers often complimented her on her artwork.
At this point, she says, “I started to really think about art as my career, as something serious.” At the time, she and her husband, Victor Arellano, an engineer now at Northrop Grumman, were in Illinois. But when the family moved to Syracuse, New York, Vilchis immersed herself in art classes even more than before.
Her husband, she says, is wholly supportive of her art, but Vilchis recalls one time when he found one of her artworks a little unnerving. It was called “Deja-vu” and her husband didn’t think she should include it in a show because he deemed it too “scary” and was sure that no one would want to buy it. The piece, it turns out, made a big impression and was the first one to sell.
The picture, Vilchis says, projected exactly what she was thinking about the subject.
“I always like to do art that takes people by surprise. It’s not what you’d expect to see, and not what you would see in a regular painting. I always like to kick it around a little, and make it a little more interesting.”
Idea and execution
Often, when Virginia Vilchis sits down to paint, she’s dredging up emotions from deep within.
“I feel like my best painting is when I’m really mad and when I see something that I don’t particularly like in the world or around me, or something that is bothering me. All of my paintings have an internal message that I want to project.
“I can never make something that doesn’t have a deep meaning,” she continues, “because I feel like everything that you put out there should have something like a strong meaning behind it. I want people to see things through my eyes and really be immersed in what I see and how I feel.”
“Sunset in Manhattan Beach,” by Virginia Vilchis
Does she map out her canvases beforehand, or does she just dive straight into the work?
“For certain paintings I have sketches that I start and design,” Vilchis replies, “but for the most part I see it in my head; I picture something and I just go for it.”
However, even with sketches in hand the picture often goes off into another direction. Why is that?
“The Future,” by Virginia Vilchis
“I always change it because at the moment I’m creating something I don’t want to be restricted to what I’ve already done. It may look really good in the sketch but it (may not) look good in the actual canvas. So, I do sketch, but I don’t follow the sketches 100 percent: I’m always open for ideas at the moment.”
Of course, the first thing we see when we look at a painting that Vilchis has done, even before we grasp the ostensible subject, is the color palette she’s drawn from and the texture she’s employed to lend it more of a visceral physicality.
For the first of these, color, Matisse is unhesitatingly a strong influence, particularly his use of red (one might also sense a panoply of hues beloved by other post-Impressionist artists such as Redon and Bonnard). At the same time, the handling of color is highly commendable and it even led one professor at Syracuse, Margie Hughto, to ask Vilchis if she’d consider being her assistant.
As for the texture, which is a real eye-grabber in her work, Vilchis says:
“I love texture. I have a fine arts degree in ceramics, and I think it’s a wonderful medium that (enables an artist) to create things you could never create with another medium.”
A working knowledge of ceramics soon proved to be a real springboard for this artist.
“I work with so many mediums,” Vilchis explains, “and I like to incorporate them because I feel like every medium has something to offer. I don’t want to restrict myself. I’m always open to making my art better and incorporating new things and ideas.”
To put it another way, one of her pictures may contain oil, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, and ink.
“So every painting is unique,” Vilchis says. “I don’t know if anybody in the world would be able to replicate what I’ve done; you have to know how I did it, and really watch me do it in the whole process because I go layer by layer — layers and layers of different techniques and mediums.”
In some ways, it all sounds like a recipe for baking a delicious cake. Besides, a nice slice of art makes the mouth water as well, right?
“The Valley of Uncertainty,” by Virginia Vilchis
Cart before the horse?
Now, here’s something else that’s a little bit different:
“I always think about the name (title) and what I want to express, and then I execute my painting,” Vilchis says. “So the paintings don’t come first. Never. It’s what I want the message to project, the idea that I have, and that’s where I start.”
And after she’s got an idea and a title, then what?
“Wounded,” by Virginia Vilchis
“I go into my studio and start brainstorming,” Vilchis says. “I start with the background… and then let it sit. Do I like that? Do I really like it? Maybe not. Okay, what am I going to add? What’s the next step? And then I work with other paint. Do I like that? No, not really, and then if I really mess up the painting I’ll just throw it to the side and start a new one.”
In other words, don’t be fooled. Vilchis doesn’t hesitate to destroy or erase what doesn’t meet her standards and expectations. If a picture’s not coming together, why belabor it?
“If I get the painting to the point that I want, and I continue, continue, continue, then at some point you have to stop and call it a day, because you can work on the painting forever.”
Afterwards, Vilchis shares the finished work with friends, her husband, even her two daughters, Paloma and Jade, and she’ll ask them: What do you think?
“Sometimes they’ll go Um, I don’t know, I think it’s scary; I don’t like it.” But if Vilchis has achieved what she’s set out to, then she isn’t swayed by anyone’s response. “Good,” she tells them, “that’s what I want to do.”
It’s hard not to be impressed by her artistic sensibility, as well as her drive and determination.
Expressions, a solo show by painter Virginia Vilchis, opens Saturday, March 5, with a reception from 2 to 5 p.m. in the Carnegie Gallery at Muzeo, 241 S. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim. To view the artist’s work, go to VirginiaVilchis.com. The show runs through April 10. Call (714) 956-8936 or visit muzeo.org.