Elsa Muñoz’s paintings carry a sense of intimacy. They’re full of dark colors, but they glow—it’s as if light can’t help but seep through the lines. Panels painted with controlled forest burns have flickers of sunlight glinting through the smoke, flames spreading through shadowy leaves. Even an inky black floor-to-ceiling ocean tide at night shines almost silver in its froth. Her paintings are like dreams, even though they’re as realistic as realism can get.
“It validated this practice that I’ve carried with me since childhood, and my mom has carried with her not knowing it was literal folk medicine,” Muñoz says. “That was a profound moment: knowing you do carry ancestral wisdom without knowing it is ancestral wisdom.”
One striking encounter with beauty occurred when Muñoz’s third grade class went on a field trip to the Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center, in the forest preserves of Cook County. It was Muñoz’s first time seeing something more than a neighborhood park. Her classroom separated into groups, and a park ranger took Muñoz’s group to see a controlled burn.
Realism speaks to Muñoz because she sees it as one of the most accessible styles. “There is just something about the language of realism that it can’t help but be relatable,” she says. She wants everyone, especially the working class community she was raised in, to know art is for them too, not just for other artists with advanced degrees.
The process usually takes her a week, but for Muñoz, it’s a labor of love. “Because of the way that I paint, the application can be very delicate. Very fine brushwork.” Canvas weave can absorb pigment, but on panels, every detail, every small fleck of paint Muñoz puts down will stay there. Plus, “You love what you love,” Muñoz says. “I can’t, not for the sake of cost, I can’t pick up another material.”
The tragedies of the past year have only clarified why she paints the way she does. “You know if you can accompany someone in a dark moment, I’m happy with that being my life’s work,” she says. “That sounds so pretentious but it’s so true! Because I know I’ve been extremely hopeless and the thing that has always gotten me out has been art. A beautiful sentence, a poem, a painting. To contribute in the stewarding of that effort, I want to do that forever, please.” v
