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is an
artist & abstract painter based
in Oak Island , North Carolina
Missy Tripp Ronquillo is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the vibrant intersection of energy, emotion, and intuitive mark-making. She studied at three renowned institutions—the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia—where she deepened her commitment to creative expression and developed a diverse artistic practice.
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Since 1996, Missy has worked as a full-time artist, creating deeply personal paintings that now reside in private collections, restaurants, cafés, and commercial spaces across the U.S., Mexico, and beyond. In 2009, she founded Pescado Y Amor, her studio-gallery on Oak Island, North Carolina, where she has built a thriving creative community through workshops, retreats, and one-on-one mentoring.
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Her work has been featured in exhibitions throughout the Southeast, Mexico, and Santa Fe.
In 2024, she completed a transformative artist residency in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she began exploring frequency and landscape through a new lens and reawakened her love for figurative painting. This pivotal experience deepened her approach to symbolic abstraction and set the stage for a bold new direction in her practice. Another residency is planned for fall 2025 on the Greek island of Skopelos, where she will continue her exploration of symbolic abstraction
and energy painting.
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Missy’s current body of work, the Spirit Guide Collection, marks a powerful shift in her creative path—focusing less on teaching and more on painting as ritual, rebellion, and soul connection. These abstract feminine figures emerge through energy, symbols, and poetic marks—wild, strong, and deeply resonant.
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As she looks ahead, Missy is prioritizing time in the studio, deepening relationships with galleries, and expanding her reach to a wider audience—while continuing to nurture meaningful connections with both longtime and new collectors. Travel and cultural immersion remain vital threads in her creative process, inspiring new perspectives and lifelong friendships across the globe. Through it all, she remains committed to making art that speaks to the unseen, celebrates inner power, and invites others to experience the world through the lens of creative possibility and shared humanity.
Statement:
Through the ephemeral language of color, texture, and words, I translate what the heart knows but the tongue cannot say.
My work is rooted in the energetic—each piece a response to emotion, perception, and lived experience, rendered in layers of mixed-media abstraction that shimmer with mystery and spirit.
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I paint the frequencies of a moment—the intangible vibrations of sound, movement, and memory. These paintings are not static; they hum, they pulse, they invite. They are portals into an unseen realm where intuition leads, and the soul speaks in shapes, lines, and symbols. Every brushstroke is a heartbeat. Every layer a conversation.
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Words often find their way into my work, whispered as poetry, etched as symbols, or scrawled like secret messages. As both a painter and poet, I believe language and image are not separate—but two sides of the same thread weaving meaning into being.
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Most recently, my Spirit Guide Collection has emerged like wildflowers—unapologetic, strong, and rebellious. These guides are not portraits, but energetic archetypes—fierce feminine forces who echo the voices of the women I know and the parts of myself I continue to rediscover.
Each one arrives differently, marked with symbolic patterns that feel more like poetry than paint. They are protectors, truth-tellers, and soul mirrors. They came through in silence, with joy, with a knowing nod, and I met them with playfulness, reverence, and a sense of wonder.
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Creating this collection has been nothing short of transformative. It’s where mystery meets meaning. Where fun dances with power. And where the process itself becomes a spiritual practice—one of listening, honoring, and responding.
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Ultimately, my art is a love letter to the invisible—a visual language for what we feel, sense, and carry but cannot always name. It is an invitation to remember: we are energy, we are story, we are infinite.