Meet
Virginia Miranda

September 2011
Featured Artist
Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching Art
in the Santa Clarita Valley

At age 13 her family moved to Los Angeles.  She went from Jackson, population 2,000, to Los Angeles, population 2,000,000.  It was a traumatic change in her life and she turned to art to help her through it.  She began to sketch things that interested her such as faces, flowers and objects.  Art started out being an outlet for her, but before long it became the real joy in her life. 

When she graduated high school there was an abundance of celebrity faces to draw such as Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Liz Taylor and Elvis Presley.  Virginia drew them and her drawings showed a very superior talent. 

A few years later, Virginia found enough courage to actually buy herself a set of oil paints and a couple of canvases.  She was going to paint!  On her own she painted her first attempts.  They were not very good.  She did not quit.  She continued painting until a year or so later she had a painting that satisfied her critical taste.  It was a still life that she still owns today.

After painting a number of pieces Virginia determined that if she was going to be a better artist she would need to take art classes, her very first art classes.  So she enrolled at Santa Monica City College and took life drawing.  She learned a great deal there, but it wasn’t until a few years later that a dramatic change expanded her art horizon beyond her wildest dreams.  She and her family, husband and two of her three girls, moved to Paris, France. 

In Paris, Virginia studied under Barbara Bonneaud.  Her focus was on still life and portraits.  She learned to paint big and bold and to be free to paint without being afraid of it.  Barbara’s studio was in the heart of Paris, the 17th Arrondisment.  Virginia had to take three trains to get there and then walk almost a mile to get there.  When she arrived, she had to walk five flights up to the studio.  One had to really love art, the instruction and the instructor to go through all that.  Virginia did.  One day Barbara told Virginia that she had a very special skill, a passion, and that she should seek to expand her life in art.

Returning to Los Angeles after a couple of years Virginia continued her art education at a well known fine art school where she studied directly with the school’s founder.  After a couple of years, he handpicked her to run one of his studios as a lead instructor.  It was there that she learned how to teach art.

With a couple of years of art instructing under her belt, Virginia opened her own art studio and began giving art instruction to children in Santa Clarita, California.  Today, Virginia’s studio has instructed thousands of students, ages 6 to 91, in the techniques of the Masters.  After 25 years, Virginia’s Artworks Studio is the longest running private art instruction in Santa Clarita.

Virginia has traveled extensively in America and throughout the world.  Many of her paintings are inspired by trips to France, Germany, England, Spain, Italy, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, Mexico, Japan, China and Taiwan.