Esmeralda Silva

Esmeralda Silva (b. 1990) is an artist based in the Bay Area. Her practice includes vividly colored paintings, drawings, textiles, and ceramics. Often these works reference her deep emotional connection with her home: bright purple and pink houses, trees bursting with fruit, and horses and dogs roaming around lush gardens, surrounded by hearts and stars. In recent years, Silva has expanded these landscapes into geometric abstractions, using drafting tools as stencils and templates.

Silva joined NIAD Art Center in 2017. She has participated in local group exhibitions at Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek; Narrative, Oakland; Chico Art Center; and the Oakland Museum of California. In 2025, one of Silva's paintings was acquired for the permanent collection of Stanford Health Care. 

Esmeralda Silva is an artist who enjoys the process of making art and exploring the qualities of a specific material. Silva has primarily worked in painting, drawing, fiber and ceramics, with an eye towards expanding her jewelry-making practice in the future.

Silva wants to make art to cheer people up. Her favorite symbols are the heart and home, sharing “It’s nice to draw a house.” Sometimes her landscapes include self portraits and sometimes the female figures are from her imagination—she doesn’t always have a person in mind. She is interested in making people in doll form too, an approach she learned from former NIAD Studio Facilitator Maria Guzmán Capron.

A sense of fun and an element of play are intrinsic to Silva’s work. She likes to play around and just see what she can make, rather than having a formal plan laid out for a work beforehand. Large scale work is interesting to Silva since there’s “more space to create,”  according to her. Additionally, Silva has shared that NIAD Studio Facilitator Andres Cisneros-Galindo has been supportive in her practice, saying that most importantly he makes her laugh.

Silva is frequently inspired by the beauty of nature and animals in her work, often depicting gardens, birds, butterflies and horses. She admires how calm and beautiful horses are and would one day like to learn to ride them.