Today we’d like to introduce you to Shilo de Armas.
Hi Shilo, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been an artist since the day I was born, but the road to being a full-time artist had very humble beginnings. After graduating high school a year early with dual credits, we couldn’t afford college so I got my real estate license at 18 years old & dove headfirst into that whole industry. That led me to Airbnb management & chartering yachts out of Miami. By then, I had flown my first helicopter in hopes of obtaining my pilot license, but that had to place on hold financially. For the past three years, I explored the mortgage & finance industry, which then led me to getting my life insurance license this past year. With all that being said, my art took the backseat.
A lot of my art was birthed & inspired by a struggle or trauma, but it’s not based around it. I refuse to allow the negatives to control the positives. In the beginning of my art career, I was unable afford an official studio space so I rented out 10x10ft storage unit to create in. That tiny, blistering hot storage unit with no AC, only one light bulb & no restroom or water source is where I came up with all of works from 2015-2018, & specifically where my Body Paint Series was born. My Body Paint Series is my longest-running series, going on six years. It brings my art to life by being presented on a live human canvas while challenging stereotypical beauty standards. All of my works created before 2018 were conceived in that storage unit & served as the most perfectly unexpected foundation for the rest of my career. Making something out of nothing.
Fast forward to today, my excitement for the aforementioned industries began to fade. Every time I feel this way, God intervenes. Growing up with any & all hardships, He always provided & brought me through. Every transition was guided by Him. This next transition into becoming a full-time artist was jumpstarted by the opportunity to create three murals for a beautiful new restaurant on Memorial Drive in Houston called Maize. The two longer murals that wrap around the exterior is my own original design from years ago that happened to fit the name & essence of the restaurant perfectly, which I tweaked to match the design of the patio’s decorative bricks in order to tell a visual story. As a 24 years old Hispanic female, this was such a blessing & a sign that it was time to bring my art to the forefront. My next few projects are classified at the moment, but so far it’s only been getting bigger & bigger from there! God is so good.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The never ending road to following your dreams is almost never linear or smooth, especially when you have to start from the ground-up with no other help. Something I often struggle with & am trying to work on is asking for help. I’ve always done everything on my own & asking for help has always felt too vulnerable or like I’m a burden. Going off of that, aside from the pandemic, this past has been the most consistently traumatic year of my life for reasons completely beyond my control. All of which hindered my physical, mental, financial, & spiritual ability to create. This whole year stopped me dead in my tracks to say the least. I thought I had already been through everything a woman could go through in life at such young ages, at separate times. But one traumatic incident after another was thrown my way with zero pauses in between. Unlike Pablo Picasso, I could not make a “Blue Period” out of my struggles due to those problems hindering my health. Ever since I was little, I get bed-ridden level sick very often & require a lot of rest to recover. That can be very discouraging for such a business-oriented & motivated person like myself. True art can’t be rushed & I am very meticulous, so handling things correctly whether it’s timing of when to release certain work, when to have art shows, what products to sell & when is extremely important & thought-out for me. My body has its own timing & my brain is light years ahead of it. It doesn’t make it any easier that all my ideas are humongous, so I couldn’t be more thankful that I’m now at the point of having an assistant & a manager to help me get things done. Becoming an LLC business with my amazing team has been the best step toward a smoother road in front of me. My health is a life-long journey, but I refuse to let it control my art. I know good will come from all of it & I am here for anyone reading this who may need some advice or a friend to help who has been through it all. I pray my struggles can help others eventually!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Every time I meet someone new & they ask what kind of art I do, I always laugh & say “How much time do you have?” This is why I release my work in “series” because I can’t limit myself to just one medium. Lately, murals have been my bread & butter. Ever since I started painting, I’ve always worked large scale, never planning out or penciling my design beforehand. My favorite thing is to just free flow whatever God puts on my heart on a huge surface with a huge brush. Nothing feels more freeing to me than large-scale painting, except for sculpting.
My “Sleepy Head” series is a completely hand-sculpted papier-mache on canvas series of androgynous faces in a zen state of sleep, meditation or prayer. All of their eyes are closed, some have a slight smile but all are at peace. I’ve always had a thing for sculpting/drawing/painting faces by memory. That brings me to my copyrighted “Continuous Faces” design. This is my first ever digital drawing I attempted, inspired by the flow of checkerboard, lines, & my favorite inspiration: faces. I put this design on shower curtains to test launch how some home decor items would sell, & to my surprise it’s sold over 200. Similarly to my Body Paint Series, this is a crowd favorite. So much so that 30+ people have gotten a face from this design tattooed on them, courtesy of @spirit.stabs & @prisonpokes on Instagram. My “Negative Reinforcement” series focuses on negative & positive space & different uses of textures, mediums, & dimensions. This series was born during the quarantine of March-October 2020. What originally started as a way to navigate through the state of the world, both externally & internally, became some of my most popular works to date. All of the work I’ve ever released foreshadows future series I’m working on. I’m the walking version of my art, the way I dress, act, speak & how I present myself is very black & white, just like my art. Sometimes color makes an appearance, but that’s very dependent on what part of my life is getting color as well. That probably sounds cryptic if you don’t know me but it all connects in the end. I can’t wait to show everyone how all my previous work ties into what I’m cooking up now. It’s a completely different medium from anything else I’ve ever tried but is still very me. So stay tuned!
As far as the works I’m most proud of, although my Body Paint Series is my longest ongoing series & a crowd favorite, my proudest works are those in my Sleepy Head Series. My Body Paint Series is great for connecting me & my audience due to its interactive presentation, but sculpting my large-scale Sleepy Heads with my bare hands is so greatly challenging & the result is so fulfilling.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
Out of everything I learned from the lockdown & my health history, what resonated with my current state was having to find out the hard way how important rest is. To just be still sometimes. Life is too short to be constantly working yourself to death without realizing how much time is passing before you finally decide to do that thing you’ve always wanted to do. Even God rested on the seventh day, LOL. It’s a delicate balance of “work hard, play hard”, but prioritizing mental & physical health is a crucial element to making life easier. I also had to accept & realize that “days of preparation are never wasted”, so it’s important to know when to take time for yourself.
With that being said, I took the time during the beginning of this pandemic to reset & recuperate. The only artwork I made was for my new home’s empty walls, filling each wall up with what I wanted to see. Due to prior health issues, I suffered from Covid for three whole months & am still feeling the effects to this day. The pieces that I did create ended up becoming their own series titled “Negative Reinforcement”. Thankfully, my job history taught me a lot about working from home, streamlining my business, & being my own boss. I was fortunate enough to work my mortgage loan processing job from home during the pandemic, so I was able to stay quarantined while also supporting myself. The pandemic forced me to isolate myself & finally take much-needed resting time which acted as a catalyst for the motivation I now have to create bigger things than ever before.
Contact Info:
- Email: art@shilodearmas.com
- Website: shilodearmas.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ms.shilo/ , https://www.instagram.com/ms.shilos.art/
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVg_0TJgUYM/
Image Credits:
Images courtesy of @fortecloud & @jalen.flex
