Perla Aragon, a senior at Etowah High School, is a creative, charismatic individual who enjoys expressing her personality through her artwork. Storytelling and suggestive narratives are two fundamentals that Perla incorporates into her art. Her work has brought many student artists together and prompts fresh and exciting conversations among her peers at Etowah. 

“I would say my grandma is a major inspiration for my art. She is a very colorful person who really loves art, so I love to make art because it makes her happy,” Aragon, senior, said. 

When inspiration strikes or she sees something that she wants to paint, Perla often uses a reference photo. When it comes to the painting or artistic process, she hardly ever begins with a sketch. Usually, she starts with an underpainting, the canvas first layer of paint. This is the foundation of many of Perla’s finished canvases. 

For Advanced Placement Art, she experimented with how she could incorporate fabric into her art pieces. She created interactive portraits of students at Etowah and showed the range of their fashion styles. It was important to Perla to not only capture the person’s style, but their personalities as well. She started by asking how they would describe themselves, so she could create the best representation of that person. 

“Perla has an amazing sense of color in her art, and her portraits are especially strong. She is really good at capturing the likeness of the people that she paints,” Shannah Dean, Etowah Art Teacher, said. 

Her artwork tends to hold underlying themes that she hopes the viewer can interpret. The piece above is called “The future is not ours to see.” The subject is blind, and while blowing out her candles, she wishes to know what her future has in store. The clock in the background is broken, though she celebrates another birthday because time will continue, even as people experience tragedy. 

As a visual artist, she has drawn inspiration from her own emotions and translated them into art. This is a common theme throughout her work, “Tranquility,” which displays a battle with herself. In the middle of the painting, she is choking herself as a physical representation of how overwhelming emotions can be, often feeling suffocating and uncontrollable. The five portraits have similar expressions: looking content, sad, or off into the distance. New experiences, positive or negative, can be uncomfortable. Her self-growth is shown through the blossoming flowers around her portrait. 

“Perla’s attention to detail in her paintings display all the feelings and work that went into them. [It is] like you can feel the emotions that went into it yourself,” Keirsten Jones, sophomore, said. 

Perla expresses herself through her art and plans on continuing to share her passion with Etowah’s student body.