Victoria E. Orantes shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Good morning Victoria E. , it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
Road trips! They strip life down to its utmost simplicity. They remind me that ultimately life’s greatest luxuries are health, love, time, adventure, and attentiveness to the present moment.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My artform is oil painting, writing poetry, thrifting, hosting a community canvas, and operating a mobile art gallery/ mobile boutique- V.E.O.Visions.
Something unique about my brand is that each summer V.E.O.Visions conducts a Summer Art Tour around Los Angeles. This year the tour was done on my motorcycle; previously, it was done with my 1966 Volkswagen Beetle. The images featured in this article are from this year’s art tour, June- August 2025.
Another unique aspect of my work is that all of my paintings are accompanied with original poetry, and this year’s Summer Art Tour included performing these poems alongside the paintings. This is one of the poems that was performed this summer, and is the complimentary piece to the painting below “My Man is a Mountain”:
My man is a mountain who is not made of sand,
Thus to solid stone safety, wild waters ran.
Raging femininity freed after all these years.
A solidity whose warmth evaporated fears.
A virile embankment that diserns his complement,
Therefore are the sacred equipoise of opposites.
United not from a despondent longing,
rather two autarkies found true belonging.
Here, she is nourishment and not a flood.
With her, his soil yields growth and not mud.
A frontier for what is feminine,
Is the moralistic masculine.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
There have been many that began to change my world view, particularly within my solo road trips.
A moment my memory recalls is the day I left for my first solo road trip. I was terrified to travel on my own, nevertheless my gut feeling informed me it was something I had to do. So I listened to my intuition, left, and the first evening when driving down an empty desert highway, the full moon radiated its calming white light on the highway, easing my fears. It was a reminder of God’s love and miraculous works, which made me realize why my intuition was calling me to leave. The message that experience evoked was: my faith has to be greater than my fears.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
It was when I acknowledged that art is an existential part of who I am. When I reached a particularly difficult time in my life, art and prayer saved me.
The people around me at the time expressed discontentment with my paintings, however it was the action of painting that was keeping me afloat emotionally/ mentally, not them. That is when I began to enact my power to question who I was told I was and evaluate what art meant to me. My pain became power through critical thinking and continued creative expression.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
Love the process and the journey, not just the results and the destination.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: If you knew you had 10 years left, what would you stop doing immediately?
Stop scrolling. Live more.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @v.e.o.visions
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/jqhF2jGbLfc?si=Vfz3_YzBHGBVfIPw
Image Credits
Eskwilax Hour
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
