Local Artist Expands his Business Full Time

A couple of months ago, Alejandro Castanon quit his day job. In his 30 years, Castanon has done everything from marketing and sales to the Air Force and publishing, but has never really felt as passionate as he does now, even if it is a little scary to wonder where his next paycheck is coming from.

Now, the San Angelo resident spends his days busy with what for many will never become anything more than a part-time hobby. In color-streaked jeans and a simple T-shirt, he begins his work day, adding touches of bright blue highlight to an in-progress portrait of Jimi Hendrix. 

“There’s a lot of fear involved in that, but that fuels your passion to paint more,” Castanon says of the recent change to his employment status. “You grow up hearing ‘the…full-time artist is working in some studio apartment that has nothing in it and they can’t afford a haircut, you know what I mean?” he laughs. “There is that label and you’re kind of scared to be labeled as that.”

Castanon is not new to art—he’s been artistically involved for approximately 15 years—and for the past three he’s been building his business around an art gallery in the Old Town called Vino Dipinte. Since he started out, he’s not only grown his skill from graphite to acrylics, but has seen his art-class-centered business pick up in traffic as well. Currently, the gallery and his own artwork provide approximately equal portions of his income, he says, noting that his painting has really taken off in the past few months.

“San Angelo has been really great for a launching pad,” he says. “They’re so accepting. I mean, our community is so great and they want you to help out, they want you to grow as an artist. They’ll promote you, they’ll let you display your work in their businesses—they’re really great.”

Castanon motions to a wall where several paintings of historical San Angelo landmarks hang. These are part of a series that have been sold to the City for use in the convention center, he explains. They’ll be switched out with others he painted in the past that currently adorn the walls.

San Angelo, as it were, is big on landscapes, a staple of the west Texas style. This is what Castanon expected to find when he moved here to be with his daughter after leaving the Air Force, but the city’s artistic flavor wasn’t exactly what he thought it would be.

“I’ve always had a passion for art, since I was young. I came here and I didn’t see a whole lot of galleries here, I saw maybe two or three…so I came here and I wanted to maybe cultivate the art scene a little bit, see what was here as far as talent,” he says. “If it was more than just contemporary west Texas, maybe there was modern artists, maybe there was abstract artists. I couldn’t see them right away when I got here, so I opened it with the hope to maybe bring them out a little bit and get them to display more of their work.

“I did expect a lot of west Texas landscape and wildlife, which I definitely see, but I was not expecting to see things that had nothing to do with west Texas, that were very abstract—and I didn’t expect to find so much talent,” he continues. “There’s just an enormous amount of talent here that I don’t really have to go looking anywhere else.”

Castanon has typically been a portrait painter, beginning with his first at age 28 of famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Born in Mexico and having grown up in Germany and Spain, Castanon explains that this first portrait was about getting in touch with his heritage.

“It was scary,” he said, remembering the feeling he had the first time he picked up a paintbrush. “As a graphite artist, you deal with black and white, and you deal with either charcoal or pencil or a combination of the two. It’s real scary [when you pick up a paintbrush for the first time], because it’s just two colors, one of them you don’t even have to worry about because it’s on the paper…I think that first painting there was maybe three or four paintings that I had to redo that were underneath. The final product has about four paintings underneath that coat of paint.’

Castanon’s choice of Kahlo was no coincidence. As an artist, he says his biggest inspiration comes from others in his profession, particularly those that are still among the living, because he can interact with them and ask them questions.

“I think that’s probably the most rewarding aspect of my having my inspiration come from other artists because I can actually talk to them,” he says. “I can really pick their brain and ask why they did the painting or what they were feeling when they did it. Just having that conversation with them really drives me to paint even more, because I’m like 'wow, the fact that they went this way with it and they weren’t scared to do it inspires me to take a leap.'”

Most rewarding, however, is the painting itself, Castanon says. He describes the process as beginning in his head, where colors converge and the image changes into multiple possibilities he may later put on canvas. Just seeing a scene he finds beautiful is enough to start him thinking, and when he puts his brush to canvas the real magic happens.

“There are little things that happen during the painting,” he says. “Sometimes an artist will get frustrated, but sometimes, you’ll make this little brushstroke and step back and you’re like ‘Oh wow, that really brought everything together’, and you really love that feeling and you just kind of ride that wave a little bit. You continue to paint, and then you’ll have another one and you step back and, ‘Oh that was great, that looks really cool! I’m doing a good job,’ and you do it again, and that feeling kind of compounds quite a bit on some paintings,” he said. “The final result is great…but actually, the processes are more rewarding, sometimes. Sometimes you get that refreshing feeling of, honestly, why I paint, because I love the way it feels. Those are the hardest ones to let go.”

On average, Castanon completes two paintings a week, many of which he sells out of town. While his preference is portraits, he also does landscapes and other imagery, as they tend to be more popular on the market. Painting for sales and painting for passion is a fine line, Castanon says, but he’s come up with a way around it.

“It’s interesting to note that as an artist, you don’t really want to paint to sell, you want to paint what you love,” he says, “but I usually pick things that I love about San Angelo and I paint those. It works both ways for me on that.”

So far, that philosophy seems to be working out. Since he started the gallery in 2011, the twice-weekly art classes have seen an increase in participants and an influx in days. Now, classes are being held on Tuesdays as well, and patrons are also invited to come Sundays for wine glass painting.

The classes at Vino Dipinte typically center on a single painting which serves as inspiration, and participants then replicate the work in 3-4 hours under the guidance of Creative Director Crystal Goodman. All materials are provided, including the canvas, paint, brushes and an apron, and patrons are invited to bring both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, as well as food along with them. The courses cost $35 per session and gifts are given away to return customers at intervals.

For more information on Vino Dipinte, visit the website or Facebook.