Maria Luisa Treviño

Add to calendar Google Calendar iCalendar Outlook 365 Outlook Live About This presentation features three large-scale paintings by Houston-based artist and educator María Luisa Treviño. Growing up between Houston and the Rio Grande Valley, Treviño identified her artist and creator spirit from childhood. The artist describes her work with acrylic paint on canvas as “built and layered conversations” between the maker, the painting, and eventually, its viewer. Treviño aims for her work to evoke feelings layered through internal dialogues, creating an exchange between artwork and viewer. Organizers CAMH x Houston First is organized by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. About the Artist My name is María Luisa Treviño. I grew up between Houston and the Rio Grande Valley, with summers in my grandparents’ town in Mexico. I have been painting for more than twenty-five years, but I have been making things my whole life. My childhood was paper, markers, ribbon, and stickers; a treehouse on a Saturday afternoon; the roof of my house on a Sunday night, looking at stars. I drew oranges from under my grandmother’s orange tree and studied the greens of her avocado leaves. I spent my allowance at the papelería down the road, mesmerized by the racks of hilaza, the wooden colored pencils, the smell of the paint. Those early years taught me color, texture, and scent long before I learned technique. In my grandmothers’ town I felt a sense of freedom. There was a schedule, but there was also room – to run at the park, to walk down for an ice cream, to talk with the people of the town. I was given the tools to make things and the freedom to use them. I learned which plants grew there, and that what was cooked depended on what the season had given. I went down the block for cilantro for my grandmother’s soup and past the tortillería on the way home. I owe much of this to my family – both sets of grandparents, my aunts and uncles – who let me wander while they went about their days. Given that room, I found out who I was. All of it became who I am as an artist now. I am a self-taught artist. I work in acrylic; four or five colors chosen because they already share something – a warmth, a coolness, a kind of DNA. Mixed and diluted, they behave like magnets. They pull toward each other, an indescribable gravitation you can only feel, and the painting becomes whole. Two colors meet and a third is born. A neon pink and an azo yellow make a deep salmon; a golden green laid beside it mutes the salmon and becomes something else again. I keep notes on how these colors came to be, because by the end they are a family. I paint with brushes from the smallest to the thickest, with a palette knife, and with collage – printed and painted watercolor paper worked into the acrylic, so the two mediums join hands and the surface holds more than one kind of touch. I begin thin and build. A painting can take months, because it is a conversation. Some days I walk past one in the studio and reach for a color without thinking, and that color turns out to belong there. The painting tells me when it is finished. My work is built in layers, because feeling is built in layers. I paint in a studio my husband built me, under skylights, so the hour of the day enters the work. I carry canvases outside at night, into the wind. What I want is simple: that a stranger standing in front of a painting feels something. And I stay curious about how alike we are. We all feel. We are all drawn by what we see. A painting has its own flow, its own way of speaking, and each viewer meets it differently – finds their own meaning, their own way in. That exchange is why I keep creating. About Houston First Houston First Corporation is leading the effort to promote Houston as one of the great cities of the world. Their employees operate the city’s finest convention, arts, and entertainment venues. A local government corporation formed in 2011, Houston First’s responsibilities include the development of the destination brand strategy, promoting the city worldwide, driving tourism and convention business, operating numerous facilities, producing events that serve the community, collaborating with commercial and industry partners and much more. Other Houston First Installations