Art Con 9 is coming this weekend. In the run up to the big event on Saturday, the team is helping us introduce some of the participating Conspirators. Thanks to Martha Belden, for telling us more about today’s artist,  Vanessa Velasquez.

Vanessa Velasquez

Vanessa Velasquez recently finds herself sketching out and then painting the landscapes and characters of her dreams. She is best described as a pop surrealist, but her imagination, work and goals as an artist shouldn’t necessarily be narrowed to one focus. The bottom line is, Vanessa is an artist who has been drawing and painting since she was a small child. In 2007 she decided to make the title “artist” official and set out to earn her BFA. In the meantime, she works as a graphic web designer and creates whatever she’s inspired to create.

Vanessa has been influenced by a number of celebrated artists, including Diego Velasquez, Takashi Murakami and Mark Ryden as well as the Baroque, High Renaissance and Surrealist art movements. She has grown up in Dallas and made her life as an artist in Lakewood. She participated in Art Con for the first time in 2009 with a group of friends, and this will be her second time contributing, though she attends the event annually. She loves seeing what the artists create each year and observing the energy and excitement of the bidding wars.

As for her contribution this year, Vanessa’s not entirely sure what she’ll produce. In addition to the artists and classic styles she loves, she’s most inspired by her dreams, personal iconography and interesting color palettes she observes around her. “Lately I’ve been dreaming of herds of incredibly small rabbits with far too many legs, so that’ll probably be featured in this year’s piece,” she mused. “In other words, I’m not exactly sure what I’ll paint until I arrive at the artists’ work day.” While she currently paints in what a pop surrealist style, Vanessa hopes to explore non-representational painting in the near future.