Young painter seeks to help local emerging artists

Brownsville painter Josie del Castillo has shown her artwork around the Rio Grande Valley and Texas. Now the 25-year-old wants to use her position as a gallery assistant to give a helping hand to local emerging artists.

Brownsville painter Josie del Castillo has shown her artwork around the Rio Grande Valley and Texas. Now the 25-year-old wants to use her position as a gallery assistant to give a helping hand to local emerging artists.

Del Castillo, a master of fine arts student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, has been the curator of art shows at the downtown Galeria 409 since she started the job in January.

“You just give back,” she said. “I want to help other people and motivate them. I’ve always thought Brownsville has a lot of potential, the whole Valley does.”

While Del Castillo started as a jack-of-all trades gallery assistant this year, her relationship to the space started in 2011. As a high school student, she enjoyed being around creative people and aspired to show her work there one day.

Del Castillo struck up a friendship with owner Mark Clark throughout her years of involvement, and she said he offered her the job in his signature non-formal style.

“If there is no opportunities, you make them happen,” she said. “When you start being devoted, things start falling into place.”

The artist earned an artist residency in May at Fort Warden State Park in Washington, a time she used to “detox” from a stressful semester. She uses oil paints on wood to create vibrant portraits on equally colorful backgrounds, and she dabbles in watercolor and acrylic.

While some find oil paints difficult to work with, del Castillo said she enjoys the process. She doesn’t use neutral tones to paint skin color but rather mixes her own with pinks, yellows, oranges and purples. Some of her paintings feature the subject with green, blue or pink skin, casting off the limitations of skin color altogether.

Del Castillo said her style is influenced by her former professor Carlos Gomez, who passed away in 2016, but also her culture.

“Mexican culture is so vibrant with these zarapes and papel picado,” she said, remembering family trips to Mexico as a child. “My favorite part was looking at everything with color.”

A recurring image in her work is succulents, an homage to her mom.

Del Castillo said her love of painting is rooted in her childhood, when she would create sketches of her plush toys. She took art classes in grade school and had her first formal painting class as a University of Texas at Brownsville student around 2012.

Del Castillo said she paints her surroundings and people with whom she has a connection. She also was her own model for several nude paintings.

She said people assume she’s confident about her body, but it’s precisely because she’s not that del Castillo decided to share those paintings.

“(I decided) I’m going to paint myself because … we pretend to be confident because we want to look good to other people,” she said. “Appreciating those parts of myself helps me accept myself, and hopefully it helps other people appreciate themselves. You either accept it, or do something about it.”