Meet Veronica Gutierrez

We were lucky to catch up with Veronica Gutierrez recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Veronica, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

As someone who has suffered with low self-esteem and self-worth, I use art as a way to love myself and feel that I am enough. Through college, I began to experiment with different media and styles that reflected different aspects of myself. It was a way to feel vulnerable. While I enjoyed creating, for a while, I always compared myself to others. I continued to learn how subjective art is and continued creating in ways that brought me joy. Becoming happy with my work led me to become happier with myself. I began dressing in a more fun way (vibrant colors, fun makeup, lots of accessories) and continued having fun creating. I like using my art to make people smile, so every smile I saw, the more confident I got. I began submitting my artwork to different exhibitions, and as I got accepted and saw my work displayed, I continued to grow this newfound confidence. I painted from images I took, sculpted items meaningful to me, and even created a large fiber installation for my college. I get compliments on it every day. Getting to expand my work to these new, larger scales keeps me progressing in what I create. I even took these skills into my theatre design where I have designed detailed sets and constructed large scale puppets. Details are something I focus on and getting to see my silly and crazy sketches come alive make me proud of myself. It’s good to step back and look at ones achievements. Even a small victory is one to celebrate. As a preservice art educator instilling confidence and self-love is something I will strive to do in my classroom. As I get more confident, my work grows in size and becomes more meaningful. I hope to help others do the same and find themselves within their artwork.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I wear so many different hats in my lines of work. I am currently in a single-subject credential program at CSUN to become an art teacher within the coming year. I am also an artist who works in many forms of media such as paint, fiber, clay, and more. I have been featured in many exhibitions, including in-person, online, and juried shows. I also have a current ongoing fiber installation at CSUN in the form of a fiber bombing within their art and design department. I am also a scenic and properties designer. I have worked on 8 shows in the past couple of years, 4 of which I have assisted with design, and 4 of which I have gotten to design myself. I have designed a set for a show, many props for a musical, and large-scale body puppets for 2 different shows. Another hat I wear is being the President of CSUN’s art education club, helping organize free workshops for the community and sharing educational classroom resources. I am also the current Preservice Division Representative for the California Art Education Association, representing all preservice educators across California. To combine all my skills together, I have started a small business I call “Artsy Creations”. I sell my art in forms of magnets, buttons, and prints, as well as crochet creations, ceramic works, and original paintings. I love getting to use my artwork to bring smiles to people’s faces, so when I am vending at a market and I see the smiles of adults and children, it warms my heart and makes me feel fulfilled. I love getting to see my small sketches come to life on canvas, in a sculpture, or on stage. I am currently using most funds from my small business to get me to the National Art Education Association conference in Chicago, where I will be presenting and sharing free resources for art educators, as well as hosting a lesson plan swap. I am still thankfully finding time to create and share my work. I partake in crochet and painting most due to comissions, but I also have many plans for different painting studies such as California beaches and silly animal portraits.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

One of the things I first learned when I got my “flow” is creating for myself. I always compared myself to others or thought about what others would want to see from me, but I created better pieces when I did what I wanted to do. I would crochet what I enjoyed making versus what I thought would be popular and sell. I also fell in love with painting and painted what I wanted to. I got to experiment with abstract expressionism, colorful realism, organic ceramics, and collage. Most of my best and personal favorite works have emerged from the past few years of exploring my style and making artistic choices on my own behalf. Artistic choice is something I advocate for and promote others to do. It helps you develop confidence and makes your work more meaningful to yourself.

When it came to realism, I thought I could never do it. I used to do fan art or work in a cartoony style, so the transition was difficult for me. My best recommendation is to break down your reference instead of looking at it head-on. It can be very daunting, especially when working large scale. When you break down an image and view it as organic shapes instead of what it actually is helps the brain analyze color, value, and shape. Instead of painting an ear, you are painting off shapes and colors. When I paint my rainbow eucalyptus trees, I am painting abstract colorful lines instead of large trees in an odd perspective. The same goes for fur, which scared me so much! It’s just a ton of fluffy lines in different colors! Who knew! It has taken my realism game from 10 to 100!
Viewing reference images as suggestions

The final area of knowledge that has impacted me so much on my artistic journey was my art education instruction. The courses I took at CSUN for the Art Education minor have introduced me to so many concepts and art-making methods I had forgotten about. I was able to acquire the knowledge on how to educate others about art and art history. I don’t “gatekeep” as an artist, so I try my best to share contemporary artists whom my students can relate to and feel inspired by. I also do free tutorials to share different art-making techniques, as well as free visual and written crochet patterns. I’ve learned about culturally sustaining art education that has inspired some of my works to cover my Latin heritage. Social-emotional education has become present within my gestural abstractions. Sustainability in art has begun to be depicted in my acrylic collage pieces, where I reuse my dried paint scraps. I have gotten to papier-mache, embroider, and create cardboard sculptures that have appeared in my fiber installation as well as productions I have worked on. I recommend that artists study art education since it is so eye-opening and immersive in other forms of art.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

As an art educator, I think it’s best to be well-rounded in many forms of media. It is also valuable as an artist to create around a central theme, but create in any medium you want. I’ve done fiber, painting, collage, digital, ceramic, sculpture, and more. I feel like I get burnt out more when working in one medium over a long period of time. This would always happen when I had to make around 5 paintings a semester for my painting classes. I would get so burnt out and hit a bad artist block. I started continuing my same theme into other mediums, such as sculpture and ceramics, and it was a nice artistic break. I love painting, but I ended up also falling in love with ceramics and sculpture. I have now even experimented with printmaking. It makes me so much happier getting to create whatever I want. I always advocate the fact that we ALL have artistic freedom and can create whatever we want to. I make you so much happier to not feel like you HAVE to work in a specific way. Be a jack-of-all-trades and do whatever you want!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://artsyroni.weebly.com/
• Instagram: artsy_roni
• Facebook: Artsy Creations
• Youtube: Artsy Roni
• Other: TikTok: @artsy_roni