Allison Torneros is a new breed of pop artist.  As a mixed media painter and graphic designer, she creates hybrid works driven by fast images and the online community.

Taking a reactive approach to the creative process, she allows her paintings to do the ‘talking’: by throwing paint in an unpredictable manner, leaving it to dry overnight, then interpreting the random composition.  Working on multiple pieces simultaneously, Torneros superimposes images implied by the paint.

Her style is strikingly different, and the work is highly accessible.  So much so that clothing giant The North Face recently teamed up with Allison Torneros to come up with her own unique line of art on apparel.  And, following the success of Nom Nom Truck, food truck branding and design has also become a niche for the young artist.

Born in 1985 in the San Francisco Bay Area, Torneros started drawing at the age of 2.  Her early passion for art, coupled with her experience growing up in Silicon Valley, led her to pursue both digital and traditional avenues at a young age.  At 11 years old she designed her first website, and began exhibiting her artwork in galleries only months after graduating high school.  Torneros graduated from UCLA in 2008 with a Bachelors Degree in Design|Media Arts.  While in her senior year of college, Torneros formed CircleDot – a creative studio whose roster includes such names as Disney, Procter&Gamble, and DreamWorks, as well as celebrities and innovative startup companies.

Currently, Allison Torneros is living and working in Los Angeles.  She is preparing for a large solo exhibition at Hold Up Art in December 2011.  Titled: Streams of Subconciousness,Torneros has opened the floodgates to the collective unconscious by directly engaging her fans with the “Paint by Word” project.  Torneros posts her initial paint washes to her website and asks fans to describe what they see in one or two words.  These words become the titles for her pieces, and furthermore suggest the types of imagery that will be used to finish them.

Fully embracing social media to drive the art engine, Torneros has also started using Twitter and Facebook status updates from friends in her network as titles for her larger works.  Playing off the idea of a collective consciousness, Torneros wants her fans to feel like they are an influential part of the creation.  By directly engaging her fans, Torneros was able to successfully raise over $8,000 on Kickstarter, (the goal was only $4,000!), to fund the exhibition in December.

Tickling the subconscious in her most recent works, elegantly rendered images poke through dreamy atmospheres of fluid elemental cloud colors, contrasted at times by striking iconic illustrations.  Torneros is inspired by nature, by psychology, and by dreams.  She goes with the feeling, conveying the kind of impressions that linger on the mind in the wake of sensual experience.

written by Herbert Rusell