Check Out Vanessa Reyes’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Vanessa Reyes.

Hi Vanessa, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Making art has always been a part of my life. For me, it functions almost like an internal support system—it puts me into a determined and focused state of mind and gives me a way to problem-solve whatever is in front of me, whether it’s art-related or not. Because art has been so integral to how I interpret and frame most of my experiences, it eventually became apparent that this was the path I needed to take in building a life for myself. It has always been something I could lean on, even when my life felt uncertain or fragile. It was the one thing I had consistently been well-versed in, so when I started thinking about where to begin my career, pursuing art felt like the most obvious place to start.
That began with enrolling in the International Baccalaureate Honors Visual Arts program in high school, which was a two-year, independent, college-level course of study with an emphasis on personal research, cultural interpretation, and relationships between different cultural frameworks. After high school, I started working toward my BFA because, through my own research, I found that it was the minimum level of education many of the artists I admired had pursued. I began that journey at Rockland Community College in New York State, where I was born and raised. Starting my higher education in the place that had shaped me was really significant, especially because I would later come to understand the contrast between East Coast and West Coast culture after moving to California and enrolling in the BFA program at California State University, Long Beach.

When I moved to California, I was unintentionally and immediately immersed in Los Angeles pop culture. While supporting myself through school, I began working in event production and design, which introduced me to an entirely different side of the creative world. The dramatic juxtaposition between the environment I was in to pursue my degree and the one I was suddenly working in became a unique experience that shaped how I understood the vast array of possible creative paths in Los Angeles. Over time, I found myself moving through multiple facets of the creative industries—from art driven by community, to the institutional gallery world, to the makeshift hustle culture of the creative event industry. Experiencing all of those spaces opened my eyes to how many different forms a creative career could actually take.

Currently, I’ve started a new chapter, moving from Long Beach to Venice Beach. I’m mostly making work privately and taking a step back to allow myself to have more life experiences that I can potentially use as ammunition for my body of work. For me, this isn’t the absence of creation, but rather a period of refinement. I’m also still freelancing in event production and working as a studio assistant for other artists while maintaining a full-time job. This allows me to stay immersed in creative work while giving myself the stability and space to figure out where I want my own work to go. Moreover, I believe art exists everywhere. I’m more interested in being open to where my creative life can unfold through experience rather than following a premeditated path of pursuit.

Because my background as an artist has been somewhat unconventional, particularly because of my experience in event coordination and design, I’ve become increasingly curious about what could happen if I allow myself to explore some of those newer interests. I don’t necessarily feel like I have to have that answer yet. Right now, I believe there’s a lot of excitement in the pivot of my interests and seeing how my work can transform when I’m not just making art within the bubble of my studio. Ultimately, I want my work to be relatable beyond just the creative community. I want it to connect with people through experiences and ideas that feel human, even if they don’t necessarily come from an art background.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The journey of my pursuit in becoming a creative professional has certainly not been easy. Being an artist, in many ways, can become financially strenuous. However, I would say the biggest struggle has been balancing openness and self-trust.

As an artist, you learn the benefits of observing, experimenting, exploring, and absorbing, but your own voice serves as the greatest and most authentic filter. It’s necessary for producing work that is true to what you represent. Moreover, developing boundaries has been crucial in learning to believe in myself and understanding my worth, which is evidently a must in order to make a creative career sustainable long term.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I consider myself a multimedia artist because I like to explore outside of what is most familiar to me, which is drawing. Luckily for me, drawing translates pretty smoothly through various forms of media, especially because I think of drawing as an immediate translation of a thought or idea. I’m mostly well-versed in figurative drawing and have been heavily influenced by photography, although my work has gradually moved more toward abstract illustration.
The subject matter of my work has become increasingly narrowed to communicating energy, movement, and light. I think this is directly informed by my own close relationship with spirituality, particularly as it relates to quantum theory and metaphysical ideology. Essentially, I’m interested in the idea of existence as God, which I often communicate through stripped-down forms that can read as forces, energy, or matter. Time and space are essentially the encompassing themes of what I like to draw.

I don’t necessarily work on pieces consistently. Often, I’ll feel an urge to create when I’m thinking about a particular feeling that I associate with specific forms and colors. I’m most proud of the skills I’ve developed through figurative studies, but I’m realizing that I’m now feeling more inspired to refine my relationship with form and translate internal experiences into something more tangible that I can share with other people.

I think something that is signature to my work is its specificity, along with this recurring tension between clarity and ambiguity. That theme tends to come forward naturally because I think it’s a big part of our experiences as individuals. I visualize all people as being interconnected, almost like a web or net. If God is existence, then our individual experiences become the evidence of that existence. Another visual that stems from this idea is collective individual experience pieced together as an extremely faceted sphere. For me, this can also relate to ideas of an afterlife and cyclical lives.

What I’m most interested in now is figuring out how to make these ideas tangible without necessarily explaining them completely. I think there is something valuable in allowing the work to be specific enough to communicate an idea, while still leaving enough ambiguity for someone else to find their own experience within it.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
Some of my favorite childhood memories are spending time in nature while growing up in New York State. It was beautiful, peaceful, and incredibly green, and I think I was fortunate to grow up in such a lush environment. That connection to nature has stayed with me and has become deeply intertwined with how I operate as an artist. I think being surrounded by that kind of environment from such a young age shaped the way I observe, experience, and interpret the world around me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nillareyes.com
• Instagram: nillareyes
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nillareyes