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

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

I recently completed a multi-site mural project at local high schools, involving student participation, called the Inland Empire Future Muralists Program. The program was funded by the California Arts Council, and was based on a grant proposal that I wrote in collaboration with the Alliance For Education. I lead a workshop series at three high schools, around the topics of mural arts as a storytelling platform and a means for inspiring social change, to an audience of roughly 40 students at each campus..The students were then educated by guest speakers about topics like environmental issues, social change, and civic engagement. Then the students engaged in a group dialogue, exploring how they feel about the topics, how the topic directly affects them, their families, and communities, and what some possible remedies are for the topic. This dialogue served as the foundation for a mural composition, based on imagery that the students created. I then lead the students through the mural creation process, which included hands-on technical training, and students painting. At the conclusion of each mural, students engaged in a reflection session to explore what they learned about each topic, the creation process, and possible future careers in the arts. The program will impact approximately 1,500 – 2,500 students, since the entire student population of each campus will be exposed to the art work, (typically high schools range between 1,500 to 2,500 students). With the mural being a permanent fixture on each campus, those numbers will increase to 3,750 – 6,250 students in a ten-year period.

Darren, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve been painting murals professionally for roughly 20 years, and I’m now a business owner, specializing in murals and signage. My business, Mass Murals, was started in 2020 amidst the pandemic. The shake up in society allowed me a moment of breathing room to jump off the hamster wheel and decide to take control of how I want to make my living.

Prior to that I had always worked full-time jobs in the medical industry or service industry, with one foot in the door of the art world. I taught youth-based mural art classes part-time at several community centers, for non-profit organizations in San Francisco and Oakland, for several years. During these years I also attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, while working another part-time job at Blick’s Art Store.

I painted several high profile murals in San Francisco and Oakland between 2006 and 2016, some collaboratively and some solo. I moved back to Riverside in 2017 and began painting murals in the Inland Empire around 2020. Since then, I’ve worked with several governmental agencies, businesses corporations, educational institutions, small businesses, non-profit organizations, and residential owners to spread murals and art education throughout the greater Southern California region.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

In my particular field, mural painting, we need the support of society to survive. If there is no demand, there’s no need for supply. I’m really happy to see so many people embracing the concept of art playing a much more prevalent role in our society’s visual aesthetic. As we move into the future, business owners and leaders in branches of government are the same people who were the teenagers of the 1990’s. This was a time when wall art really flourished, and now the people who were so blown away by that movement, are in positions as adults to be much more supportive of the idea of art in public spaces than their parents generation was. There’s a much more open-minded, and accepting perspective of large scale public artwork in general now. We as muralists need that to continue in order to secure our ability to follow our passions as career paths. And us muralists have an obligation to keep this momentum going by providing quality product, and not undercutting each other. We should collectively be keeping the value of the artwork up, by providing the best possible quality of product to the extent that each of us is able to at all times.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being a full time artist is the sense of self satisfaction in knowing that I’m successfully following my life’s calling, and feel like a complete person. For so many years in my younger life, I didn’t feel empowered enough to truly follow what I felt was my life’s purpose. I wasn’t in the driver’s seat of my own life, and had not been exposed to the thought that I am the author of the story of my own life. I had aspirations of one day breaking free of the relentless rat race and pursuing my dreams, but I was afraid of taking that big leap and possibly failing, and then not having anything to fall back on. It took me a long time to realize that every person who has achieved their goals has had to take that risk at some point, often times at multiple points, before reaching a higher plateau. Now that I have come this far in my artistic journey, I look back with regret on all those years that I allowed my fear of a worst case scenario to hold me back from moving forward towards my dreams. My advice to anyone in that limbo state would be; Take the risk, make the leap, most importantly do the work, and the universe will not disappoint you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.massmurals.art
• Instagram: @darren.vs.drama
• Linkedin: Darren Villegas Art