simon silva - Biography

Simón Silva was born in Mexicali, Mexico. He is the seventh of eleven children and grew up in the Imperial Valley near the Frontera. His family survived by working in the hot sun picking fruits and vegetables as migrant farm workers. Silva himself helped his family by also working in the fields from the early age of six until the age of twenty three. Simón describes his family as not having extra money for entertainment, which led him to began drawing. 

Wanting a better life for himself away from the harsh conditions of working in the fields, Simon decided to go to college and got his Associate Arts degree from Imperial Valley College. He then followed that with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration from the distinguished Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. 

Since then, Simón Silva has made a career out of painting, public speaking, and writing. His renowned artwork has appeared in several distinguished venues around the world. As a public speaker he has traveled extensively throughout the country doing his lecture/workshop called, “Creating Sustainable Equity Through the Arts” to professionals, educators, students, and parents. 

The lecture/workshop reveals to individuals a clarity and truth about the arts that has remained unknown for decades. He reveals all of the important easily applicable benefits of the arts that will be a requirement in the new economy. Things like enhanced communication skills, improvisation, being introspective, developing better questions and understanding that mistakes are capable of producing new and exciting opportunities.

Silva says, “we were all born with genius level capacities to draw, think, learn and to question.” He believes that society has imposed a discrimination against our children simply because they are children and we stop developing what’s already naturally there.

He believes the arts are an important component of everyone’s education but they need to be taught correctly. By doing so, we can develop and nurture what’s organically already there . This will give everyone a greater degree of success in the 21st century job market.

Silva points to the arts as the single source of his life-long learning, his communication skills, and his constant evolution.

The greatest outcome, easily producible, will be an abundance of sustainable equity for life both professional and personally.

We will be able to enhance a greater degree of the human potential and make the the abnormal quite normal through the use and application that only the arts can produce.