Laila Espinoza Feik is a mixed-media visual artist who lives and works as a bilingual arts instructor for school age children in the East Bay. Her unique style of creating networks and textures with fabric, yarn and thread and then painting on top of those tactile surfaces, allows her to maintain a balance between creative experimentation and technique. Laila’s work has often been referred to as “visual narrative”. Each painting really does tell a story that is often personal but also stories she has heard from others which have deeply impacted her. The stories can be found in a memory, a dream, a vision…and in the same way that she layers fabric, yarn, and paint, she tells these stories, within stories, within stories.

In her own words “I paint to remember who we are, to better see where we are going, and to tell the story of the human experience by expressing and sharing my personal story as well as those of other’s who have really affected my life. I tell the story through what I consider “visual code” and sometimes through writing. I believe that telling our story is the catalyst for transformation. We are deeply influenced by images. Images make a permanent imprint in our minds. I want to create images that trigger the viewer to reflect, question, search, and discover.”