Meet Flor Quinto

We recently connected with Flor Quinto and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Flor, 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?

I developed confidence when I stopped worrying about what other people might expect of me and instead started focusing on what makes me happy, which often means ignoring the rules I learned in school. I noticed that following my instincts in art making leads to the biggest discoveries, and that’s when I produce the most authentic work, which makes me feel good and also resonates the most with the public, which in turn makes me feel connected, and that certainly helps my self esteem. Also, learning to embrace all the quirky things about my personality and the way I look at the world as the things that make me, and my art, unique and interesting, which is validated for me every time I display my work and someone feels conected to it in some way.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am primarily a painter, although much of my current work contains very little paint. I use an extensive array of materials to create highly textural pieces, and I love to push the boundaries of what can be effectively used as art medium—makeup, expired medication, old letters, packaging material, shattered CDs , other fragments of obsolete technology.. What I’m really doing is exploring the emotional resonance of these abandoned objects. I use primarily wax and resin to hold everything together on wood panels that range in size from the miniature to massive. My largest finished piece is eight feet wide and six feet all, and I hope to go much larger one day.
Currently a collection of my mixed media paintings is on view at the Hive Gallery & Studios in Downtown Los Angeles. Something I’m very excited about right now is that I’m about to go to my first artist residency at an art ranch in the desert.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I believe the best way to learn a specific craft or technique is directly from other artists, taking workshops when you can, or just observing and listening. A lot of artists experience similar struggles. Find communities where you can draw together, paint together, or whatever it is that you’re into. Get together with other artists and organize your own exhibit, that’s how I met a lot of artists in Los Angeles. I intentionally sought to live among other artists, and then I collaborated with some of them to create our own art and music shows in empty warehouses. That had an enormous impact in my journey, because many of the connections I made then eventually led to more opportunities.
Another thing that has worked for me is practicing discipline. I spend as much time as I can in my studio, because it is the most important skill I can cultivate. You have to dedicate many, many hours to your craft before you can develop your own personal style and your system, and that sometimes means prioritizing your studio time over socializing and other fun activities, which can be hard on family and friends. But setting that time for yourself and sticking to it is incredibly rewarding. You’ll never regret the time you spend creating.
The other advice I can give is to always be professional and treat people with kindness, because you never know where those connections might lead later.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I believe it is important to follow your passion. That could be in one very specific area, or maybe you have few different interests and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you are curious about a certain genre or technique, learn all you can about it, even if it doesn’t make sense at the time. Eventually you will acquire enough experience and perspective to use everything you learned to create something truly unique.
When I began painting, I did representational work in an impressionist style. That’s what I was passionate about at the time. One day I felt called to do something completely different. I had an urge to press a bouquet of dried flowers onto the canvas, add some paint chips and torn journal fragments, and seal everything together with acrylic medium. It didn’t make sense, nor did it relate to anything I had learned before. I wasn’t even sure if it was possible, or “allowed” to make art like that, but I just had to try it. That was the beginning of an ongoing exploration of texture that I’m still excited about more than a decade later. I learned how to work with resin and encaustic wax, which is what I now use primarily. Also, very recently, I returned to painting, though now in an abstract form, completely different from what I was doing fifteen years ago, and I feel that working in mixed media for all these years has definitely informed that sense of freedom and confidence.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://florquinto.com
• Instagram: @florquintoart
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florquinto/

Image Credits

Christopher McElrath
David Acuña
Nikola Katsikis