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

Alright, Brenda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I started formally learning and practicing visual arts when I got into the Osceola County school for the arts. OCSA offered an intensive visual arts program and taught us everything from sculpture to painting, drawing, understanding, conceptual, art and more. We even got to take a field trip five hours south to one of the biggest international art festival Miami Art basel. Everything I learned in the three years I attended at school was absolutely invaluable for the artist I am today. Though I didn’t attend college, my biggest obstacle for becoming successful, which I am still working on has mostly been mental and emotional. Therapy has been a an invaluable help for me to find my voice and dim negative thinking patterns that didn’t allow me to pursue my dreams.

I’m not sure there’s anything I could’ve done to speed up my learning process, especially in therapy since I know that I did my very best every step of the way and I tried my best in doing my own self-help therapy. It wasn’t until last year that I was able to access a full-time therapist and start my therapy practice which opened up my mind to a whole new level of understanding how successful I can truly be and how much my dreams can really come true.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a Mexican visual artist based in Chicago Illinois. I’ve been living in the Avondale area for about four years now.

I am definitely an artist of many hats. I mostly work in fine arts making acrylic paintings, drawings and mixed media pieces. I am also a muralist. I have worked on several larger scale mural projects in the Chicago area. I also vend my artwork at various markets around the city where I do live portrait drawings of people. In addition to the portraits, I also sell prints of my works, as well as my self published zine “Baby Tomato”.

A big focus in my work is portraiture. I like to interpret peoples faces and focus on making the viewer really feel the expression on the face. I like to tell stories based on my emotional healing through spirituality in my work. I also feel that my art translates best on a larger scale, so it is my intention to find more opportunities to present my work in larger scales and larger project such as doing more murals or finding ways to use larger canvases.

Coming up I am interested in starting to do some curatorial work in the upcoming months. I have also recently been selected as a DCASE grant recipient. With this grant I am currently working on a solo show to be set for February 2026.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I believe that in order to create a thriving creative ecosystem we need to start to move away from consumerism and more towards sustainability and community. Moving more towards a society that focuses on and cherishes, artistic endeavors and visions over profits and bottom lines starts with the individual. By supporting your community and more local efforts rather than bigger corporate stores and chains, you put the money back into your own community rather than helping feed a corporation that doesn’t need any more of your money. I think that if you’re caught up in the mentality of consumerism and trends it’s hard to remember that the cool thing about your outfit is the way that you wear it and the special touch that you give it not the fact that you’re wearing something that might be trendy. The coolest thing about your outfit is the person in it not the fact that you saw it on an influencer on Instagram. This is something that I need to remind myself often as well. Many times we might feel stuck in a capitalist and consumerist cycle of mindlessly scrolling being influenced, shopping trends and then ending up looking like everyone else rather than realizing that you have something perfectly good to wear, that you can just up cycle or make your own in a different way that doesn’t require spending money at target or shopping online on shein and cider. And the thing that I can come up with on my own is cooler and gives me a greater sense of identity. Not that Ive never shopped online or was overtaken by a trend, but the more you talk about something the easier it might be to slip into that lifestyle. Which is my goal. focusing on sustainability and community to help the planet and my local shops and artists.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Ever since my high school field trip to Art Basel I have dreamed of having my art featured in Art Basel! It’s a big part of what I dream about and a large part of what i wish to strive for. Reaching that goal would represent that my work is recognizable enough and that I create work that speaks to people so deeply that they would want to pay me enough money for me to be able to retire my parents and afford to have children someday.

Image Credits

Angelica Rodriguez Cruz