Color opens up worlds for artist Noelia Nuñez and for viewers of her paintings

STAUNTON — Artist Noelia Nuñez captures what she loves in life onto canvas.

A cross country runner and then coach at Riverheads High School, some of her favorite pieces bring her back to running on the trail.

Using vibrant colors and painting with large brush strokes to create movement, she loves working with acrylic paint because they are fast-paced materials. It feels natural to her, she says, and allows her to release energy within her and pour it into her work.

We are on the path with her and can feel the dance of light amongst the trees with warm earth tones underneath guiding the way.

But it took a long time for Nuñez to switch paths and fully immerse herself in her work as a full-time artist.

Originally from South America, her family immigrated to the United States when she was 9 years old and in 2003 moved to Staunton. Her family’s beauty shop is Bonitas downtown where her identical twin sister Sophia works.

It was Sophia who convinced her to stop hiding her art in sketchbooks and share it with the world.

“I would hide a lot of my stuff in my room and nobody would see it,” she says. “Art has always been there as a thing that I would do because I felt I needed to do it.”

The first time she shared her art was at a street festival downtown. And then she started working as a barista at coffee shops and began to display her artwork on the walls. Her first commission was to paint the By & By.

“For a long time, I worked in coffee shops and then I started adding my art into those worlds.”

At first she thought people were just being nice and offering encouragement but when more people asked her for specific paintings and drawings, she began to move in a different direction.

“That's how I started doing all the Staunton series,” Nuñez says.

Other than an art class in high school and painting class at Mary Baldwin University, Nuñez is primarily self-taught. The skills she developed running cross country allowed her to create the structure and discipline needed to learn and grow as an artist.

It was her coach at Riverheads High that encouraged her to do something where she felt like she was helping herself as well as helping the kids. This led her to working on her art while doing her barista job and volunteer coaching all in the same world.

“And then I started doing more shows. People were inviting me to do more. Can you do a collection of paintings and bring them into whatever place that was.”

She thinks what drew them to her work was the vibrancy of the colors she uses. “People wanted color which was fun.”

At first Nuñez thought it had to be a certain type of art and then people encouraged her to just use what she felt she needed to use.

“And that was me,” she says. “So that was really cool to see that people really want the color and the vibrance and the movement of color and the light.”

Her work as an artist was increasing and she was doing a little bit of everything, she says. And then the pandemic happened.

“And that's when my yoga world started opening up. I needed something to center me physically as well as mentally and so I started doing that through the pandemic.”

She’d set 30-day challenges for herself and noticed she was getting strong physically and strong mentally. When Briohny Smyth’s Aligned Yoga teaching program opened up online, Nuñez put in the 200 hours to become a certified yoga instructor.

It was also during lockdown that Nuñez decided to take the risk to fully immerse herself into her art. When restrictions started to lift, she said goodbye to “her kids” on the track team she coached. She still misses them, she says.

“I love the kids, and I loved working with them, but I knew that I had to do my own thing and I couldn't let them go. But then the pandemic happened and realized this is the time to do it.”

As more and more restrictions lifted, Nuñez took a yoga class downtown and met Megan Burrows, owner of Burrow & Vine on Beverley Street. Burrows opens up her second floor as a teaching space. One of the classes offered there twice a week is yoga.

Nuñez asked her if she could teach yoga in Burrows’ space and she said yes.

Burrows had also seen her art. Before long, Nuñez was teaching painting classes there, too.

“We have group classes. I provide the canvases, the paint and the easels and we recreate one of my paintings step-by-step and hopefully we all have a painting at the end that we can take home with us.”

She tries to create a space where people can have a little fun, paint and enjoy themselves, she says. “Enjoy color and maybe learn something new about themselves.”

Nuñez likes to have fun and play with her own artwork experimenting with different mediums and giving herself permission to paint big.

“That's the goal. To create these bigger than life pieces that you can kind of walk into. Hopefully I'm headed towards having a space where I can do that.”

Right now, she is focusing on her art and yoga. Teaching classes helps her to feel more solid financially, she says.

“I think I’m at a point where it’s still scary to take this risk, but I feel there’s enough trust that I can do it,” Nuñez says. “And this is the time to do it if I'm gonna go for it so I try to seize the day as much as I can. I feel like that's where I am with my art.”

Noelia Nuñez teaches group yoga and painting classes in Staunton and at Blue Ridge Community College. To connect with Nuñez and see her artwork, visit https://noelianunezart.com. You can take her yoga class and see her paint live on Saturday, March 11, during the Queen City Women's Day festival.

Reporter Monique Calello can be reached at mcalello@newsleader.com. Subscribe to us at newsleader.com and support community journalism.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Artist Noelia Nuñez brings bold color to Staunton art fans