From the article "ArtThoughts: A Case Study in Self-Reliance"
by Gresham Riley appearing in ArtMatters, June 2001
Alejandra Villegas is a twenty-three year old painter who lives in the colonial city of Oaxaca, Mexico, renowned for its rich artistic heritage and celebrated as the home of three of the country’s greatest artists --- Rufino Tamayo, Rodolfo Morales, and Francisco Toledo. Far from being awed by the tradition of which she is a part, Ms. Villegas seems determined to add the name of a woman to this distinguished list.
I met Ms. Villegas this past March on a warm Saturday morning in her spacious studio where she was finishing work on 35 canvases for an exhibition that was scheduled later that month. Our meeting had been arranged by Linda Hanna, a Californian who lives year round in Oaxaca and who served as my mentor about the art and artists of the region. Linda knew instantly whom I should interview when I expressed interest in talking at length with a young artist of exceptional promise.
Not only is Ms. Villegas young; she is largely self-taught as a painter and supremely self-confident. A university dropout as a marine biology major, she enrolled in several art schools, including the highly respected Rufino Tamayo Studio of Art, but left each quickly because she chaffed under the rigidity of an academic approach to making art. In spite of her bad experiences, Ms. Villegas knew at the age of 19 that she had to be an artist, and for the past four years she has dropped everything in order to devote full time to her painting.
Although she sees herself as part of a Oaxacan tradition of painters, her work reflects neither the bright colors nor the folkloric themes often associated with that tradition. Her colors tend toward muted blues, greens, reds, and yellows with ample use of darker tones, and the images that populate her paintings (puppets, scarecrows, dolls, circus scenes, trains, and butterflies) are drawn from childhood memories and from an active dream life.
Who and what I discovered in the interview was a young artist of uncommon maturity and a body of work worthy of someone who had painted much longer than four years. Ms. Villegas has mounted an exhibition each of those years, and on the basis of that modest exposure has established herself as a talent to follow. |
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