Finding Yourself in your Art: An interview with Flor Castañeda
An Artist's Self Discovery
Flor Castañeda is a senior Fine Arts major from Sonoma County, California. Flor is a multimedia artist, experimenting across acrylic and oil painting, sculpture, oil and dry pastels, textiles and digital work. She has spent the last several years refining not just her technical ability, but her artistic signature.
In speaking with Flor, the conversation moved beyond building artistic skill, but being able to apply that skill into work with personal meaning, and how AUP facilitated the uncovering of that knowledge.
Flor has "always known she was an artist" and has been making art for the good majority of her life. By the end of high school, she states that she was confident in her technical abilities, but felt that something was lacking in her work. "I was getting pretty good at technique," she said, "but I wasn't actually painting something that came from within me."
As a child, she would gravitate toward whimsical imagery, like fairies, angels and imagined figures. As she grew older, she focused on the female form, inspired by life events she went through. Looking back, she sees a throughline in her work: she was always drawn to something about the whimsy of girlhood.
As she entered university, Flor realized that, rather than beginning with an idea rooted in her own experience, she would rely on external sources for information. "I would scroll Pinterest and be like, 'Okay, what do I want to paint today?'"
Through the courses within the Fine Arts major, Flor began to shift her focus inward. "AUP not only helped me to refine some technique, but seek inspiration for my artwork in a more personal way and create artwork that aligns more with my desire to express what I want and what I'm feeling." She also said that her courses taught her how to discuss her work in a more articulate and sophisticated way. "I started to develop a dialogue around my artwork that can be grounded in something that's impactful rather than 'Oh, this is a really beautiful painting of a cow that I was inspired by on Pinterest.'"
Several courses at AUP have played a key role in expanding both her technical range and confidence. Notably, a summer course on Parisian architecture challenged her to work with scale, structure and perspective, pushing her beyond familiar subject matter. "It just grew my confidence," she said. "It showed me that sometimes the initial struggle can just require a simple tweak that can dramatically shift your practice."
Beyond the classroom, Paris itself played a significant role in reshaping what being an artist meant to Flor. She explains it as a "partnership with the school but also with Paris itself." She says that it was "refreshing seeing so many people not follow a linear trajectory and make an actual livelihood out of their creative thing they do."
This shift in mindset was meaningful, given the doubts she had encountered from her family. Like many students who pursue a creative field, she had been warned about the uncertainty of an artistic career. "The biggest thing that Paris really showed me is that the option of being an artist and not falling into the starving artist trope is so real and tangible."
Image Credit: Flor Castañeda
Flor's upcoming senior project brings together the many threads that have defined her time at AUP. She is working on a series of self-portraits alongside textile pieces. One of these will be "almost mural-inspired, but that really falls along the same patterns of girlhood that I'm drawn to, but specifically the transition of girlhood into womanhood. There's this self-confidence and innocence that we feel simultaneously at this age." Flor explained her self-portraits as an "exploration of self-discovery and self-actualization."
She intentionally combines classical technique with unclassical materials, such as paints or markers from the children's art section. "It's about self-discovery, but also about remembrance."
As she looks ahead toward graduation, Flor emphasizes the importance of curiosity and commitment for prospective Fine Arts majors at AUP. "Give yourself the licensing to explore and not just get stuck on one thing. You're gonna get out of it what you put in."
Reflecting on her career at AUP, she sees her education not as an endpoint, but as preparation. "With the more experience and knowledge that I can get under my belt, I will be primed by graduation to actually believe that the very thing I desired is actually possible."
