Johnny Castillo (b. 1995, Guatemala) is a Los Angeles-based artist exploring displacement, identity, and memory through oil painting. Using both traditional and contemporary techniques, his work draws from personal and collective histories. Castillo earned his BFA from CSULB and is an MFA candidate at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. He has exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions in California, New York, and Virginia.

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Memory drives my work—how it fractures into partial images, fleeting sensations, and shifting emotions. Painting is my tool for gathering these fragments, constructing hybrid worlds that feel familiar yet unsettled. I return to painting when memory, language, or the world itself feels insufficient. I am drawn by moments that feel incomplete or unstable, shaped by distance and long periods without return. As a Guatemalan immigrant and DACA recipient, I grew up navigating prolonged separation from home, language, and family—a condition of distance that shapes how memory functions for me and gives urgency to the creation of images rooted in uncertainty, longing, and reconstruction.

 

My practice draws from mid-19th-century Realism and contemporary approaches to composition and materiality. Engaging with Realism’s attention to overlooked lives, my paintings often depict figures in quiet action—holding objects, lingering at thresholds, or occupying spaces marked by interruption or distance. Childhood toys, photographs, and keepsakes frequently anchor these scenes. For immigrants, such items function as vessels of home: small enough to carry across borders, yet dense with emotional and historical weight. Barriers—both physical and symbolic—appear as architectural obstructions, unconventional crops, masks, or averted gazes. These elements reflect the borders that have shaped my life, from language barriers in school to decades spent separated from my birthplace, grounding personal narratives while examining how identity and belonging are negotiated visually.