In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with art teacher and painter, Emilio Villalba.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
In this episode, Emily Wilson interviews painter Emilio Villalba about his personal and professional journey in the art world. Emilio discusses his decision to become a full-time artist, his creative process, and the inspirations behind his latest show, 'Paintings from Home,' at Dolby Chadwick in San Francisco. Emilio, who also teaches Canada College, also shares the challenges and rewards of his artistic practice, his background as an animator, and insights into his creative influences, notably the Bay Area figurative artists.
About Artist Emilio Villalba:
Born in Southern California in 1984 to Mexican immigrants, Emilio Villalba felt his artistic drive early on. Emilio initially studied animation and received his BFA in 2006 from the Art Institute of California and quickly began work in that field in his early 20’s until moving to San Francisco and transitioned to the medium of painting. In San Francisco he received his MFA in Painting in 2012 from the Academy of Art University. Villalba’s work reflects his studies in both abstract and figurative painting. At the core of Emilio’s painting’s there is pure portraiture, but great focus on the disharmony of the self and perception. Pressures from society and the toll it takes on the emotional state of the subject when confronted with benevolence. Raw emotions and the fragility of the soul. Villalba overlaps and repeats human features with a kaleidoscope effect. “Don’t Worry” is the 2018 painting of his that I decided to feature. It pulls you in with a sadness at its core and doesn’t want to let you go. It reminds me of the face we may give to the world, that all is ok, but the eyes tell a different story. I urge you follow the links below and discover his somber and seductive work.
Visit Emilio's Website: EmilioVillalbaArt.com
Follow on Instagram: @Emilio_Villalba
For more on Emilio's work at The Dolby Chadwick Gallery, CLICK HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2025-0513 - AIA - EP049 - Emilio Villalba
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 1 0 2 0.5 FM every Friday at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
Artist Emilio Villalba: It wasn't a decision to make art.
It was a decision to become a full-time artist. Like art was gonna be my pursuit. I was gonna pursue art and draw and paint every day, essentially.
Host Emily Wilson: That's artist Emilio Villalba, the guest on this episode of Art is Awesome.
I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting such great people [00:01:00] that I created this biweekly podcast to highlight their work.
At the opening of Emilio Villalba's current show at Dolby Chadwick on post street in San Francisco, the gallery was packed with friends, supporters and art lovers. This show paintings from home is deeply personal, recent paintings. They're thickly layered and inspired by images from Emilio's life. His stylistic influences range from the Bay Area figuration movement to expressionism to abstraction. Emilio teaches at Canada College in Redwood City and runs the gallery there. He's exhibited extensively in the Bay Area and New York. The Crocker Museum in Sacramento and the Noman Museum in Kansas recently inquired his work. The curator there, Joanne Northrop, wrote in the fore to the exhibition [00:02:00] catalog.
His paintings are alive with busy brush work, thick impasto and a vibrant palette. I went to Emilio's apartment in North Beach where he lives with his wife, Michelle Fernandez Villalba, also an artist. Paintings by Emilio and Michelle and their friends hung on the walls. We talked in the room they used as a studio.
Amelia's paintings are so layered, he needed to finish them a month early so they have time to dry and some were still in the room. When we talked, Emilio's love of painting stands out. It seems like he's either painting, teaching, painting, or thinking about painting.
Artist Emilio Villalba: Process is everything for me, and not necessarily that I do it well or anything, but when I look at other people's work, I'm always trying to think of the process, try to dissect how, how they go about the work. That was huge for me with, with these paintings, the more chaotic collage looking [00:03:00] paintings, but the reason they're called everything is something is because every single mark is something.
There's no abstraction really. There's abstracted elements and there's abstraction happening, but it's, everything is something. It's not just a brush mark for the sake of a brush mark or something
Host Emily Wilson: on the wall was one of the everything is something. collage paintings.
Artist Emilio Villalba: All of these objects for the most part, are either objects here in my apartment or things in the neighborhood in North Beach, or on my walks to the art store, I've kind of been a hermit the last two years, and that's where I live is either in my apartment outside having a smoke or walking to the bar down the street or walking to the art store. So it's kind of this small little bubble. And the plant that's in the pot is from outside.
That chair is the rocking chair that's in the other room, the wheel that's in the courtyard. Everything is in [00:04:00] the the, those are Michelle's workout shoes that she just bought.
Host Emily Wilson: The paintings are very personal to him.
Artist Emilio Villalba: The only things that sometimes I throw in little nostalgic elements like an imaginary computer, you know, that I, that I grew up with my friend's cat.
I always like the idea of, it's not necessarily what you paint, it's how you paint, which I, I agree with, but at the same time, it's very difficult for me to paint something that. Isn't mine necessarily? Not like the, the trash bag of Cheetos outside isn't mine, but it's on my street and I connect with it somehow.
Host Emily Wilson: For this show at Dolby Chadwick Emilio is doing something different.
Artist Emilio Villalba: I'm not saying I'm trailblazing. There's a lot of artists that make work that's abstract and thick and whatnot, but I don't know. It's new to me. I've done portraits and try to go a bit more realistic with some of my work, even though there's been abstract elements.
This is a completely new journey for me, and it's been really frustrating and really tough. And challenging, [00:05:00] but, you know, very rewarding. I mean, they, they work out. You just make them work.
Host Emily Wilson: For more than 10 years, Emilio has been painting, but he started as an animator.
Artist Emilio Villalba: There was a recruiter essentially that came to high schools and whatnot, to advertise for the, for this, for the program.
They sold it as like an art school essentially, and animation involved. And then I took a tour, but I was just a dumb high school kid, went to the school, looked around, saw some drawings, and I was like, oh, cool. This looks good.
Host Emily Wilson: Emilio knew what he really wanted to do was paint.
Artist Emilio Villalba: I remember watching the Basquiat movie at that animation school. That's when I realized, I'm like, I didn't, I want to be a painter from that movie. And it took me a year or two to try to, to leave the school. And then the, the director. Somehow talked me into staying. So that's how I ended up being an animator.
Host Emily Wilson: Emilio made ads for the Super Bowl and worked on Pirates of the Caribbean three, but he moved to San Francisco to go to the Academy of [00:06:00] Art and study painting.
Artist Emilio Villalba: I remember my dad just saying, it's like, this is your last chance. I was already an animator. I quit. He was like, you're going back to school. You're gonna spend a shit ton of money. He's like, you have to make it work this time. So I was like, well, I'm gonna teach.
Host Emily Wilson: Emilio did teach while he was still getting his MFA.
Now he's a full-time art teacher at Canada College along with painting.
Artist Emilio Villalba: I do love teaching, you know, it's very rewarding. I love being in a creative environment. I get inspired by the students. I, I'd like to think that I inspired the students.
Host Emily Wilson: A change in his practice led to him getting his first solo show about 10 years ago.
Artist Emilio Villalba: I was like trying to get my head in the game to like kind of just level up a little bit. And that must've been around 2014 when I decided to, I guess I should say, it wasn't a decision to make art. It was a decision to become a full-time artist. Like art was gonna be my pursuit. I was gonna pursue art and draw and paint every day, essentially.
Yeah, I think I started that in 2014, or maybe it was [00:07:00] 2015, somewhere around there. Then the next year, modern Eden gave me my first solo show from that decision to paint every day and take it seriously
Host Emily Wilson: along with things in his neighborhood and home. Emilio is inspired by art history.
Artist Emilio Villalba: I feel like every month I have a new hero in art and I have like my.
My main hero for a year or two that I attached to, or sometimes five. I don't know. I'm, uh, making up numbers here, but, you know, when I was in school I was, uh, really obsessed with Velasquez that mixed with the little Kadinksky mixed with other artists.
Host Emily Wilson: At the Canada College Gallery, Emilio curated an exhibition with his friend, the artist, art Appreciator and Public Defender, Mac Gonzalez.
It's on view through May 15th, and it's of the work of Paul Warner and William Theopolis Brown, two members of the Bay Area figurative movement. The [00:08:00] group included David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bishop, and Joan Brown. They inspired his current show at Dolby Chadwick.
Artist Emilio Villalba: The new work is, I guess to sum it up, first and foremost, I think the inspiration came from discovering the Bay Area figurative artists.
David Park specifically, my friend Matt Gonzalez, gave me the biography by Nancy Boas to read and I read that took me, I don't know, eight months to read it. And it was like that book changed my life that way. I like laughed, cried, and with the book, and I just fell in love with David Park and just immersed myself into the, uh, the Bay Area figurative world.
Paul Warner, Theis Brown, Elmer Bishop Demon Korn, Joan Brown. You know the list goes on. Also, on top of that, there was a little mixture of Gerhard Richter, Stanley, Whitney, and you know, you never really let go of all your huge heroes.
Host Emily Wilson: Emilio says his art keeps changing because he's inspired by everything.
Artist Emilio Villalba: It has [00:09:00] shifted a lot. I, I, I truly love art. I just soak it all up, you know, I'll go to a museum, I'll go to the Turner Show, and I want to paint black. Paintings. I'll go to, um, uh, see a David Hockney show or something, and I want to be colorful and it's like culture or something. You just, I'm just constantly soaking it up and, and, uh, I'm a copycat.
I want to go into the studio and just regurgitate everything that I, that I see.
Host Emily Wilson: This is three questions. The part of the show where I ask the guest the same three things. The questions are, when did you know you were an artist? What's some work that's made an impression on you, and what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Emilio Villalba: When did I know I was an artist? I, I don't know. I've never liked using that word, artist. I always just tell people I'm a painter. I, I, this is true. I, [00:10:00] again, I'm not like fishing for compliments or anything, but I, I've never felt creative. I've, I've always felt like I just, I create, but it feels like work. I have to work at being creative.
I've never felt naturally cool, naturally creative. And definitely don't feel like an artist
work that has had a big impact on me recently. I mean, oh man, that's a, that's a tough one. It shouldn't be this tough. I mean, I guess I was just at the Wayne Thiebaud show yesterday that. It's like music or something. The, um, uh, the, the most recent thing I see has, has had the biggest impact on me, but I could say the, the first time I saw Guernica, that was, that was a huge impact on me seeing Velasquez paintings in person.
I mean, first time I cried in front of a painting, which I never thought would happen, that was a huge impact for me. The MoMA, [00:11:00] um, uh, has a big impact on my work. The Gerhard Richter paintings there. Um, and yeah, the, the Thiebaud Show yesterday was, was really inspiring. The other one I can remember that was like mind blowing for me was, uh, seeing Turner's work at the, uh, the de Young must have been 20 16, 17, something like that.
The most creative place in the Bay Area for me is, is my apartment. I think I, I love painting here at home and sharing the space with, with my wife, you know, post Covid, we. Everyone I'm sure you know, with during covid is just, we got so used to being hermit locked in our, our spaces and it's, I, I feel like I can be really creative outside of the apartment, but it's become the creative zone.
Feel safe here. And when you're in your safe space, your little bubble, you, you can kind of be free to create whatever you want without anyone judging you or, or the fear of someone judging you. And [00:12:00] when you're working in a group setting. Uh, even at school sometime, you know, I'm supposed to be the teacher that everyone's supposed to look at, at as like a role model and I get insecure.
I'm like, oh, I have to draw realistically or have to paint realistically. Like, what, what are my students gonna think if they see me experimenting? Yeah. I think this apartment for sure is the, for me, the most inspiring to, to work from.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you so much to Emilio Villalba, the guest on this episode of Art is Awesome. His exhibition Paintings from Home is at Dolby Chadwick in San Francisco through June 28th. The exhibition of Paul Warner and William Theopolis Brown is at the gallery at Canada College until May 15th. And thank you for listening.
Please follow the show and listen next time when the guest will be Christine Wong Yap, who's curating an exhibition of paper Cuts [00:13:00] twin Windows through June 7th at the Kearney Street Workshop.
Art is Awesome, is a biweekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited. By Charlene GoTo of Go-To Productions. It's carried on KSFP, LP 1 0 2 0.5 FM San Francisco on Fridays at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod with Incompetech Music.
Be sure and follow us. On Instagram at Art is Awesome podcast or visit our website till next [00:14:00] time.