About
Bio
Peruvian-American artist born in Lima, Joa Vilallonga works across painting and other observational practices. She trained at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Lima and earned a BFA in Illustration with a minor in Art History from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, graduating Summa Cum Laude.
Her work centers on inner states and the subtle tensions that shape individual experience. She approaches portraiture as a space of resonance rather than representation, treating the human face as a landscape of perception. She works primarily in watercolor to explore atmosphere, stillness, and emotional nuance.
My work
I paint to understand quiet spaces, moments suspended between thought and feeling. I work in watercolor for its translucency and unpredictability; it reveals tone rather than perfection.
My work doesn’t aim to describe or explain. It seeks to create a subtle magnetism: a pause, a point of stillness, a pull with no logical reason.
I often include animals or small natural forms in my portraits, not as symbols of anything grand, but as registers of what doesn’t fit into language, what a face alone cannot hold.
I paint what asks to be acknowledged: a memory, something unresolved, a lived experience rising quietly into view. I do not paint to narrate stories, but to create places of resonance, spaces where the viewer can linger, connect, and recognize, something familiar or almost forgotten in their own way.
Joa Vilallonga
Contact
For commissions, questions, or inquiries, feel free to reach out. I read and respond to all messages personally.