Born in East Los Angeles and raised in Riverside, California, Denise Silva (Xicana / Hopi / Mescalero Apache) is an indigenous femme, a mother of 6 seeds and a total Pisces sun + Cancer moon who loves to explore plant medicine + mysticism and weaving those experiences into her world of art. In her earlier years, she attended Riverside Community College and went on to graduate from California State University, Los Angeles in the late 90’s where she studied art + illustration.
Motherhood brought Denise back to the Inland Empire to put down roots + raise a family while homeschooling and starting a home business. It was during those beautifully chaotic years that she began to slowly immerse herself in community art spaces in downtown Riverside. Fully embracing the diy aesthetic, Denise was also nurturing an online space for women + mothers on Pearmama dot com, which started off as a humble mom blog in 2006.
Denise shares spiritual medicine in the form of art, divine messages to find our way home, uplifting the Divine Feminine to shift the culture at large + collectively heal the Earth and one another. At the center of Denise’s art practice is her spirituality:
Elevating the ancestors, telling the story of Mother Earth, big rematriation energy
a humble bow toward the plants
the water
the animals
the land
Drawing + creating stories was a refuge as a latch-key child in the 80’s. Denise created little fantasy worlds for herself when the one she was living in couldn’t be understood. The artist is still creating those fantasy worlds for herself, vast and expansive, often exploring the stages of wombmanhood: childhood, inner child, maiden, mother, crone.
A multi-disciplinary artist best known for her conceptual work with collage, paint, paper, ink and installation, Denise began exploring digital art in 2018 and it expanded her work in many life-changing ways. Her art is intentionally woman-centered + Earth-centered, rich with sacred Mesoamerican symbols, ancestral veneration and Divine Feminine mysticism. The work fuses together storytelling with bold figurative shapes, universal symbols of feminine creation + dream-like color stories that bring to remembrance innerspaces we have visited in other realms. Organic shapes often overlap and create unique abstract dimensions within dimensions in what the artist describes as: conversations with her spirits.
Denise has worked from her home studio in Riverside California since day one, a survival tactic that most creatives who are also parents can understand. A delicate balance but a very necessary one: it allowed her to be home with her children, normalizing the practice of being creative, doing what you love to do + being a grounded presence in the family.
The artist works in the energy + style of Indigenous Futurism which draws upon our ancient technologies for inspiration and our collective liberation. Denise uses her art + vision to be in conversation with one another, to uplift the collective spirit + to raise the vibration of our communities. She creates art to uplift the feminine energy’s protective influence on Mother Earth + to remind us of our cosmic roots.
The artist has been very active in the Inland Empire art community leading art sessions, creating dynamic art programming + exhibiting her work in shows in local places such as Back to the Grind, Inland Mujeres Art Studio, White Park, The Garcia Center for the Arts, Division 9 Gallery, Palm Springs Art Museum, The Center for Social Justice & Civil Liberties, Pain Sugar Gallery, A Blve Rose Gallery, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, The Little Gallery of San Bernardino, Barrio Fuerza and All Eyes Gallery.
Pearmama evolved from a mother’s journal about life with 6 children to a lifestyle blog with DIY projects, sponsored posts and stories about family and motherhood to its current iteration — sharing her art + writing from the ancient heartspace on Corn Sister.