Chloe Trujillo is a multi-hyphenate artist whose fine art landed her a collaboration with the … [+]
Chloe Trujillo and I were connected because of her collaboration with the Olympic artistic swim team to design their swimsuits for the next iteration of the Summer Games. The expectation was to speak to her about the inspiration, design, and sustainable aspects of the collaboration and how she was tapped for the project. Fairly straightforward, right?
Although through our chats, what was discovered was that Trujillo is not a fashion designer in the traditional sense, because design is not her main trade. She doesn’t have a brand nor does she identify solely as a designer. Instead, what I discovered was a woman who straddles several strata of culture including music, fine art, and design, all of which she merges with a deep infusion of positive energy and healing from her life as a practitioner of the healing arts.
Best known for her work as a painter, Trujillo’s breadth of creativity doesn’t come as a surprise as she grew up surrounded by creatives. A native Parisian whose mother was an artist and whose father was at the helm of fashion brand Claude Barthelemy Paris, Trujillo grew up with near-daily trips to The Louvre which helped encourage her artistic acumen. Life in Paris imbued Trujillo with all the inputs for a career in art, although it was a tragic event which drew her to meld fine art with the healing arts.
“I was attacked when I was 20 and it was a horrific experience, but caused something to shift in me where I asked myself the question: why?,” she says on a call from her Topanga Canyon home. She further reveals that in addition to the attack, there was the layer of an unhealthy relationship in her life that compounded the issue. “I was at a place where I had given up on all what brought me joy, including art,” she says. “But the attack was a slap from the universe to get back into my life’s purpose and bring joy back into my life.”
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Since then, Trujillo has released a non-stop stream of work in multiple genres from music to paintings to accessories design. Although it’s her brightly-colored, heavily-symbolic paintings which explore otherworldly themes of spirituality, love, existence, life and death that has captured the attention of her collectors. The piece titled Aztec De La Chloe, a guitar upon which Trujillo etched her designs into, premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and is currently on display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“I put a lot of intention into my artwork,” she says. “Whether you believe in it or not–energy healing, reiki and all these modalities I’ve learned—I have ingrained these into what I create. It’s a very mystical experience for me. I have visions of what I’m supposed to paint and what colors I’m supposed to use. You can learn all the techniques and everything in art school but tapping into the spiritual realm helped me find my voice and my style.”
The swimwear collaboration came about as mystically as her paintings. Trujillo was direct messaged by one her followers on Instagram who is a flamenco dancer and wanted to commission a dress. Trujillo was unable to take on the project, but two years later when her husband, Robert Trujillo, the bassist for the famed band Metallica, and his bandmate, guitarist Kirk Hammett, were in Barcelona, they took flamenco guitar lessons. Little did Trujillo know at the time but these lessons would one step closer to her connection to the Olympics.
“Ends up that guitar teacher is the husband of the woman who contacted me!” she laughs. “That’s how crazy the world is!” So, the same flamenco dancer who sought her out on Instagram and whose husband took on Trujillo’s husband as a student, shared Trujillo’s designs with the coach of the Olympic artistic swim team. And the rest? Well, it can be chalked up to that proverbial saying about history.
These days, Trujillo continues to delve deeply work into her work. She’s released her second studio album less a year ago and has also released a new music video last month. She’s currently preparing for a showing of her paintings in Los Angeles.
“Whether it’s the art and the colors, or the symbols and the music, the sound, the words, or the designs, I try to infuse everything with positive. I hope to do a small part of trying to uplift the world and make people feel good,” she says. There’s a slight pause, after which she releases a smile, a nod, and says with an almost otherworldly sense of knowing, “Yes, that’s my message.”
A born and bred Parisian, Trujillo currently lives and works in Los Angeles with her husband, … [+]