PRIYA CARMONA
Learn a little bit about my background as well as my art practice
About Me
I aim to create inviting artworks, an open door for you to step inside and find a world where vibrant color and unbounded imagination collide.
I am an emerging artist from North Carolina, currently completing my Bachelor of Fine Arts at Southern Adventist University in Tennessee, working primarily in acrylic and digital painting.
My work has been displayed in the 2023 group exhibition Make Sense Nonsense and the Graphic Design and Fine Arts Gallery Opening across 2024 and 2025, within the School of Visual Art and Design at Southern Adventist University.
Growing up as a mix of Black, Latina, East Indian, and Asian ethnicities, I have always moved through the world seeing it through multiple lenses — absorbing different cultures, aesthetics, and ways of understanding beauty. That multifaceted perspective lives in my work, reaching for the expressive and unexpected, much like the life I have lived at the crossroads of cultures.
My practice is deeply rooted in visual storytelling. I am drawn to the "show, don't tell" power of this type of artwork. I am currently building a body of work inspired from the imaginative space, at the intersection of illustrative fine art and the storytelling found in concept art.
Artist Statement
I make art that moves viewers to a feeling, a story, an imaginative space that leaves them wanting more. The way I see it, our world has always been fascinated with telling stories, it's part of what makes up the creative mind.
I find storytelling everywhere, in movies, novels, and music that inspire me daily. I personally tell those stories through my digital and acrylic paintings and whether it draws out delight, sorrow, or even a touch of fear, my work reaches for that same emotional pull you feel when a story truly grabs hold of you.
My art practice intertwines with the ideas of Romanticism, values I carry into my own paintings through bold brushwork and expressive palettes, saying what words often cannot. I seek to reach past the visible world and into something more fantastical, a version of life that feels truer to the imagination than to the eye.
My work is heavily inspired by illustrative and concept art — its fantastical worlds and its boldness in pushing the boundaries of the natural. That boldness in color, in storytelling, in imagination is the direction I am committed to as a young and passionate artist.
