We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eva Pimentel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Eva , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

My senior year of high school I got to take the opportunity to go into AP art! one thing that everyone in that class had to do was come up with a portfolio of 9-13 pieces. this portfolio also had to have a theme. after weeks of going back and forth on what my theme was going to be, I chose fears and phobias. This theme meant a lot to me as someone who struggles with anxiety, painting these phobias helped me better understand them. I also wanted the viewer to better understand what its like to live with anxiety and phobias if it wasn’t something that they had themselves. it felt like I was letting go of the fear I had with every brush stroke. needing to bring my fears to life was scary at first but ended up being very therapeutic. the whole portfolio took me 9 months making a total of 13 works. towards the end of the school year my art class had a showing that was open to the public. I ended up stepping away from my booth to use the bathroom and I come back to see a women staring at my art. I get excited, run up to her to introduce myself. “hello my name is Eva I am the artist do you have any questions” she looks back at me with tears running down her face “you are the artist? can I give you a hug” in shock not knowing what’s wrong I obviously say yes, I ask her what is wrong and if she’s ok and she says back to me “everything is fine, my daughter has anxiety and I sometimes struggle understanding what’s going on in her head, your portfolio has better helped me understand what she is going through and it just made me very emotional” now I am bawling my eyes out with her. at the moment I knew what I wanted to do with my art. I wanted to provoke emotion and connect people. the women’s name was lora. I will never forget her

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I recently graduated tiverton high schools visual arts CTE program. I got into art in middle school but knew I wanted to make it into my career in high school. I am now a full time student at CCRI going for art education. I got into the industry by becoming a member at gallery X in New Bedford and meeting other amazing artist that have given me so many amazing opportunity’s like, making it into the south coast today, selling my prints at punk shows and recommending me for things like this! I specialize in painting but also work in oil pastel, etching, scratchboard, linoleum and more! I do commission pieces, sell originals along with prints of the originals and some etching and linoleum prints. I do this mostly through instagram and in person shows but want to start a actual website soon! I am very proud of the style that I have developed that gives my art a little grungy twang. art is my whole life and I wouldn’t want it any other way makes me happy, sad, angry, excited but most importantly it makes me feel connected to the other artist and art lovers. knowing that when people buys a work of mine they also buy a little piece of me is very heart warming. I am still young and new to all of this but I am so exited to see what I learn and what the future has in store for me.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My goal is to eventually become an elementary school art teacher and paint murals in the city. I think that education of the arts is so so important especially at a young age. art education has been proven to encourage kids to have more open ended play, supports their cognitive and social skills along with teaching them a way to express themselves and their emotions, and even without all of those facts making art is fun above all! I am very excited to hopefully be able to teach the next generation of future artist. mural painting is something I have very little experience in but I always loved how it can Bring a boring building to life! I always saw them growing up in New Bedford and looked up to the artist who did them. overall though my mission driving my creative journey is to just keep on making art because it’s what makes me happy.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Something I had to learn was drawing what I see vs what I think I am seeing. for a long time I avoided realism just because I struggled with it and didn’t want to go through the pain of learning it, that changed around 2 years ago in my advanced studio class when I was forced to finally learn it for a couple of assignments. I absolutely hated it at fisrt but my art teacher gave me some tips that really helped me. One of them being to draw what you see and not what you think you see. I didn’t really know what that meant until he told me to draw something using a reference photo that was upside down. after doing that I wasn’t looking at a nose and thinking ok that’s a nose I’m going to draw it, it made me think about every line and shadow because I wasn’t seeing a nose I was seeing a shape. when I was done drawing and I flipped it right side up I was in shock on how much better it was just from that advice alone, now I use realism in almost all of my art and I still use that technique.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Paintbrush_Asshole_

Image Credits
All images taken are owned by Eva Pimentel