Anthony Z. Padilla: Super Natural

By Hayley Labrum Morrison

I shuffled through stacks of hundreds of stunning works on paper at Martha’s Contemporary in June 2019 and managed to whittle my selection down to three, and then to one. It was difficult to choose, but the oil painting I ended up buying belonged to Anthony Z. Padilla, whose work I had only seen in passing on Instagram up to that point. The rich greens and vibrant blues of Anthony’s nature-inspired abstract-leaning piece resonated with me as I had just completed a foliage-filled watercolor myself. But beyond that, embedded in the piece’s depth, its movement, and its richness, was a contemplation on the mysterious and the familiar that captured my fancy.

Anthony’s work continues to be a feast for the eyes as he delves into new imagery and pushes beyond the jungle and into the skies. Read on to learn about his practice, his breakthroughs, and his optimism for the future.

Hayley Labrum Morrison (HLM): Where are you from, Anthony? 

Anthony Z. Padilla (AZP): I’m originally from Dallas. I lived there till I was 27, been in Brooklyn for five-and-a-half years now. It’s a lot like Austin. The biggest transition I think is changing from driving everywhere to taking the train, and biking and walking, which I prefer.

HLM: How did you get into art?

AZP: I’ve always liked to draw and stuff since I was a kid, like playing with chalk around six or seven and then drawing and sketching with paint markers and sharpies and I never really left it. Painting I got more into later in life when I was around 20 or 21. It was acrylic for the longest time, then it turned to oil. It’s all been, I guess “self-taught” is the way to describe it, though it sounds kind of cheesy to me.

HLM: Sounds like art has always been a part of your life. Tell us about the space you work in.

AZP: Up until four months ago, I was working from home, which was fine. I had a little desk set up and I had a wall I could do the big pieces on. But during this pandemic, I lost my job so I was on Unemployment and I was missing that work routine, like going somewhere and getting out of the house. So my friend Rob approached me and said “Hey there’s this studio space that seems reasonable,” as far as the price. So we looked at it and decided to take it. You know, it’s still pretty new, but we’ve transformed the place to make it our own and I definitely think it has encouraged me to paint more. Obviously I have more time off now that I’m not working full-time, but I still had that mentality of going to work and showing up.

HLM: What are some things about your studio that you value?

AZP: This place is really a nice studio, which is funny because when you look out the window it’s a sea of garbage trucks. It has really big windows and lofted ceilings so it feels spacey and we’ve put a lot of plants hanging around. What I really need is natural lighting and that was the biggest factor in choosing the space. It’s better for painting because you get a truer color. When I painted in my apartment I used these studio lights that had a yellow tint to them so the (color) would look completely different in natural light. I plan to continue to fill the space with hanging ivies and plants and flowers.

HLM: What are some of your favorite materials?

AZP: All of my paint brushes are filbert heads—which I’m just most comfortable with—all different sizes. I use them for all of my pieces. All of my work is oil on canvas. I always paint on pre-stretched canvases. I don’t want to have to find someone to stretch the canvas or stretch it myself and worry about ripping it. Even though part of my job for the last five years was stretching canvases so I’m not super worried about it but I’d rather just have it finished as soon as I’m done painting. I always use the thicker bar, I think it’s the gallery size. I like it because it stands off the wall and painting the edges makes it look completely finished when it’s on the wall so you can frame it or just leave it as is and it looks really good. For the bigger pieces I always paint on the wall. I have the French Cleat system, three different ones placed on the wall so I can pick it up or lower it down or just have it on the floor. So I’m always sitting or standing and I don’t have to bend over and can stay comfortable. Whenever I make the small paintings at my desk I’m kind of hunched over and there have been a few times where I pulled a muscle in my neck.

HLM: How do you usually start when you begin a new piece?

AZP: Well now I sketch them out first, just lightly with a pencil. And I try to do it, depending on the size, all in one sitting, like one consistent idea that was free flowing like at that moment. I mean, you can see it’s pretty much all the same style. I usually have a specific plant or flower that I want to build the rest of the painting around and I’ll start off with where I’m going to place it or how big it’s going to be. Then I use the leaves and blades of grass to frame it and either go behind it or on top of it to give it depth and decide how I want the shadow to fall on, say, the flower. I like to use the shadows that’re cast on the flower to give it more shape and depth. The shadow will cast over and go into the creases of the flower and stuff, but I don’t want to overdo it, just a couple spots, that way your brain sees it the way it should.

HLM: It seems like your imagery is kind of real, but also a little imaginary, bordering that line of surrealism.

AZP: Yeah, and I like doing it that way, because when I see hyper-real paintings it looks like a lot of work. Like that’s above my skill level. I’d rather just stick with what I’m good at. The surreal feeling comes out a little easier.

HLM: It’s more interesting to have an interpretation anyway because there are so many people that can paint photorealistically and there are also cameras, so there has to be a specific angle anyway.

AZP: That’s exactly how I feel.

HLM: I love the perspective in your pieces. You’ve got macro and micro views and vantage points looking up from the ground and down into the roots. Can you talk about that?

AZP: Yeah sure. I like the close-up stuff, it’s almost abstract, right? It’s just like Georgia O’Keeffe, I don’t know if she’s the original or not, but she stands out in my mind as the artist that is best known for that. She said the exact same thing: it’s the abstraction. My first real style I stuck with was abstract stuff, just shapes and designs all over the place. So I have always liked that style. And after doing the plants and floral work for a while I still wanted to keep in touch with that abstract-ness. I think it’s neat to get really close up with the curves and the shadows and it’s almost like you don’t really know it’s a flower, but then I like to throw something in there that reminds you that it’s nature, like a couple of leaves going across or a stem or pestle coming in. So that’s the close-up stuff, right, and then the more surrounding-jungle or stepped-back pieces where you can see everything are really fun and you can put a bunch of different flowers and stuff and get really creative—“creative”—that’s a funny word to use, but I can put a bunch of different pieces in there. 

HLM: And you’ve had some sky appearing in your work lately. 

AZP: The reason I did that the first time is because a guy reached out to me about a collaboration. He wanted me to make nine or ten flowers that he was going to use later for a storefront design. It never happened, but I had the painting anyway and it had all of these flowers suspended on a white canvas. So I thought I would just put a sky in the background. I had never done it before, and I liked the way it came out. And also, it was a little less stressful, it was quicker, and it gives it more space, so it’s not so enclosed. With this painting behind me, I went in afterwards and did little blue marks on certain leaves and it’s like you’re getting little glimpses of light coming through. It’s fun to do at the moment, I’ll say that. I hope to perfect it. The clouds are still kind of hard to get just right, I’m working on it.

HLM: Clouds are deceivingly hard to paint. If you look at JMW Turner, he spent hours and hours studying clouds and how they refract light. I think it’s a pretty interesting element you’ve added to your work, it’s such a contrast between the depth of the greenery and the clarity of the sky.

AZP: That’s something that l like about it, it’s a big light and dark contrast.

HLM: Can you talk about how you decided to paint greenery in the first place? What fascinates you about it?

AZP: That’s kind of a hard question to answer, ‘cause I really don’t know. It just comes out super natural—supernatural (laughs). Sounds like a ghost or something. It comes back to that abstract style. Even though it’s all recognizable, in a way it’s just shapes coming together.

HLM: it sounds like it’s a visual language that helps you communicate. Like maybe a leaf is a word, and a flower is a word, and you put them all together to say what you want to say.

AZP: Yeah, exactly, trying to create an emotion. I like that they are all little bitty elements that you can put together and I like to think that our brains just accept it as a nature scene because we are all familiar with flowers, birds, leaves, and trees. And once it all comes together, our brain just accepts it. It’s fun to put together, just like a puzzle, and make it acceptable for someone’s brain to see it as a glimpse of some jungle somewhere.

HLM: Can you talk about any surrealist influences you have?

AZP: I definitely have a few surrealist painters I really respect. There’s one I don’t see mentioned as much, but his work is really cool: Desmond Morris. He studied people and crowds. All of his work is surreal, abstract, Dali-like stuff, looks like an alien planet. He’s an influence on my work. I had been painting a bunch of abstract stuff two paintings before I started doing the nature stuff. I did a couple paintings that I really like but they looked so much like his work I didn’t want to do it anymore. I felt like I was copying his painting so I changed it up. Luckily the third painting after that, I was still following his same style and then I just happened to make a piece with an organic shape that kind of looked like a flower so I went with that and built the rest of the painting around two flowers I made. And from then on, I’ve always done it this style. And now I’m just making it look more realistic.

HLM: You toyed with some undulating organic shapes like Moore’s in the past and it makes a lot of sense that you are where you are now. It’s a clear progression.

AZP: The leaves and stuff don’t really go away. They are an easy element that’s fun to bring in and out of the main focus of the piece. Especially the small paintings, because then it’s really just one flower or root, and then the leaves frame it and flow around it easily.

HLM: I’ve noticed some animals and objects showing up in your work.

AZP: The guy that commissioned that piece wanted animals in the painting and I was like “Okay, I’ll give it a shot,” and I sort of left it to the end and had to really focus on it. But, after I made them I realized it was a new feature that was fun to do. I feel like I have a weird curse where I’ll do a specific bird or snake one time and if I try to repeat it it doesn’t come out very well. There are plenty of animals in the animal kingdom so I’ll just do a different one each time (laughs).

HLM: It sounds like that commission opened up your mind to some new possibilities.

AZP: Yeah, I’m working on a flower now that I wouldn't normally have chosen to paint for a guy’s show in Dallas. He has each artist doing a specific flower, and he gave me a Fire Lily. It’s got all these tentacles and stuff. I definitely wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for this guy’s show. 

HLM: Have you ever had the urge to paint something kinda ugly? Everything you paint is pretty beautiful.

AZP: I did paint something one time that my girlfriend really didn’t like. She has some phobia of things that have big holes in them. I never painted that again. But other than that, I like to make pretty stuff I guess.

HLM: What concepts have you been thinking about lately? Are there ideas you want to explore but haven’t? 

AZP: Yeah, I do have a bunch of thoughts and ideas running around with different paintings. I try to draw it out if I have something that I don’t plan on painting anytime soon. I’m not anywhere near finished with this floral style, but I still like abstract stuff and think it would be cool to flip what I am doing and use the same outline of what I would do for a big piece but not have leaves and flowers, just shapes and colors in the same layout. And I like architectural drawings and paintings with crisp lines of buildings and structures, but I am not there yet. I still like doing the jungles. I just wanna do really big pieces, that would be fun. Inside the studio, like 5’x8’.  

HLM: What’s the biggest you’ve painted?

AZP: I’ve done some murals but I didn’t get a chance to do it in my style. The structures have been off. One of them was on a bridge that had a really strange shape and the other was at a bar and they had a specific thing in mind. But, I’m coming down to Texas to do a similar style to what I do here. It’s a big flat wall outdoors and I’m going to try to get close to what I’d do in the studio.

HLM: If you had an endless budget, what would you do?

AZP: That’s super easy, I’d do a huge painting. Like a giant one.

HLM: How big?

AZP: I’d want to finish it within a year, but I don’t know, like 20’x30’ if I had an unlimited budget.

HLM: Any specific site in mind?

AZP: I’d open it up to anyone who wants to host it inside their building. Whoever can fit inside, they can take it, if we are daydreaming. I guess that’s not a deep thought, but it’s an easy answer, it’d be really fun to make something really intense…

HLM: All-encompassing...

AZP: Overwhelming. Just a really big, overwhelming piece. I’ve done this once, but it was just a small piece, where I did three pieces and angled the side pieces so it was panoramic. Like Monet, at the MoMA where it’s an entire room of water lilies that go all around. It just feels like you’re inside the piece. I’d maybe have some bird sounds going on.

HLM: Tell us about skateboarding and how it’s influenced your art practice.

AZP: I don’t know about the artwork itself, but it’s given me structure to go upon. Skateboarding is all about committing to the sport. If you enjoy it, it’s easy to commit to it, because it’s fun. But it’s still challenging, and you have to practice. You fall all the time, and you gotta get back up and try again and stick with it. With painting, I feel the same way. I remember when I first started skateboarding, I could barely roll on it and now I’m a lot better than I was then, obviously, because I just stuck with it. And the same thing goes for painting. If you have the ideas in your head, as long as you stick with it, and enjoy it—enjoying it is an important part of progressing, I enjoy painting all the time—it definitely makes it easier to get better. Eventually you start surprising yourself, the more you stick with it and really devote your time to it. That’s what I learned from skating. And it’s not like I learned that and was like “Okay this is how I’m going to go about painting,” It’s just something that’s a part of me now. I just know that if you really enjoy something, stick with it. 

HLM: That’s a valuable life lesson. That’s true for anything anyone wants to be good at.

AZP: Sometimes I get compliments like “Wow, you’re so good at painting,” and I don’t feel like I’m good at painting, I think I just really enjoy painting, and eventually, if you really enjoy something and put a lot of time into it, not necessarily trying to get better at it, it naturally happens, you just get better.

HLM: Well said. What are you excited about in the future?

AZP: Space travel is pretty awesome and I’m excited about that happening more. But I feel terrible that the pandemic has caused so much turmoil for a huge percentage of the world. But for me, there really has been a silver lining. I was able to go on unemployment, and I’m actually going to start working again, but for the last seven months I was able to paint and make a lot of pieces, which has been a weird blessing. But of course, you gotta be optimistic about the future. We are living in a super strange time. I keep expecting aliens, that’s the way 2020 is gonna be topped off. But I’m serious, space travel is really cool and something to look forward to.

HLM: It totally is.

See Anthony’s menagerie grow on Instagram and his website.

More like this: Manik Raj Nakra, Emma Hadzi Antich