“I thought I could do it all. I was working full time, getting my Masters, teaching art, working with an online business, and being a mother to my three children who were 2, 4, and 6 years old. There were so many pressures and demands that finally my body just collapsed. In the space of three months, I had two episodes of paralysis. The first one lasted only a few hours. After it resolved, I kept doing everything I had done before and ignored my doctor’s advice to take it easy. The next time it happened, it was more serious and lasted much longer. Even though the MRI didn't show a physical problem, my doctor said that my body was breaking down due to stress. He told me, ‘You've got to slow down or your health will get worse. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for your children.' That caught my attention. I knew I had to make some drastic changes, so together my husband and I worked out a plan. I resigned from my job and dropped everything else I was doing, which meant a cut in our income, a change in schools for the children, and many changes to our daily lives, but the sacrifices were worth it. My husband said, ‘This is your opportunity. Why don’t you do what you love?’ For me, that was painting. I had painted all along, but never full time.
“That was five years ago. It took a health issue for me to focus on what is important, which is God and my family. If you never have the experience of losing or of pain, you don’t appreciate happiness and opportunities when they come. Now, before I say yes to a new project, I try to ask myself how it will affect my husband, my children, and myself. Maintaining a good balance is hard because there are so many things I’m interested in, but so far it’s working.
"It's important to me to see the beauty and the positive side to everything that has happened. For example, even though many of my paintings are political and deal with hard themes, I don’t use blood or negative images. I can make statements that are just as strong with beautiful images and with color."
“That was five years ago. It took a health issue for me to focus on what is important, which is God and my family. If you never have the experience of losing or of pain, you don’t appreciate happiness and opportunities when they come. Now, before I say yes to a new project, I try to ask myself how it will affect my husband, my children, and myself. Maintaining a good balance is hard because there are so many things I’m interested in, but so far it’s working.
"It's important to me to see the beauty and the positive side to everything that has happened. For example, even though many of my paintings are political and deal with hard themes, I don’t use blood or negative images. I can make statements that are just as strong with beautiful images and with color."
"Unity is a very important theme in my work. I appreciate my background and my Latino culture, but I want others to be just as proud of their own identity. When we embrace our who we are, along with our roots, our past, and our culture---whatever it is---we begin to appreciate both ourselves and others. We appreciate how connected we are to the rest of humanity.”
Yancy Villa-Calvo
Website: http://www.yancyart.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/YancyART
Bio: http://www.urbanartcommission.org/artists/yancy-villa-calvo
Website: http://www.yancyart.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/YancyART
Bio: http://www.urbanartcommission.org/artists/yancy-villa-calvo
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