Bio

Airiel is a painter who creates spaces. She finds her home in the power of multiples creating installations. The number of paintings is determined by the content of the intention, such as the 108 paintings in the Gayatri Mantra series.

She says, “I love the idea of being a part of something greater than myself— to create environments that hint at the mystical and can possibly take one beyond our physical senses and selves. I would love for people to come into the installation and experience it with their eyes closed.”

Airiel was born in Houston, TX.

After a successful career as an Art Director and Associate Creative Director for several ad agencies, she moved to Berkeley to attend the Arts and Consciousness program at JFKU where she received an MFA in Studio Arts.

Feeling inundated with the objective image permeating the ad world, she chose to create artworks and art installations that were subjective and also experiential in nature. Her desire was and is to create work that can be sensed as well as seen. Her inspiration—the mystery, the mystical, and the unknown.

Airiel’s work has been shown in the Bay Area at Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, ProArts Oakland, Alta Bates Community Gallery, Gallery Route One, and First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, and nationally in Atlanta, Boulder, Santa Fe, and Houston.

Airiel now paints and art directs in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Statement

Each painting I do is really the same painting. A continuous moment of space, quiet, chaos, and the unknown. Expressions on canvas/paper/wood that dance between the inner world and the physical, always with the intention to bring forth what is unseen. 

When I feel untethered, painting moves me into a primal mode; the reptilian, instinctual part of me is fully present and the conscious, cautious, careful me is gone. I work in the sacred realm in an instinctual manner; grabbing paints and mixing right on the canvas. I’m scraping away layers, balancing weightlessness and groundedness.

Inspired by the Rothko Chapel, I’m drawn to create contemplative spaces. While working on an individual painting I’m also aware it’s one of many taking the form of installation. Each series/installation is unique in its theme and intention, from an installation on the primordial sound to a space that holds the fragility of breath.   .