In an out-of-the-way corner of the bustling, vital campus that is City Height's Hoover High School, an 18-year-old senior named Angel Marquez perches before four easels bearing his extraordinary art.

NELVIN C. CEPEDA / Union-Tribune In a Hoover High School classroom, Angel Marquez has his personal space to create art, including a piece that hangs in the school's main office.

The vibrant colors and bold brush strokes are impressive for someone so young. What radiates from the work is sensitivity and heart that reflects not only his bumpy life's journey but a joy at what's yet to come.

According to Hoover High art teachers Ron Moya and Jeremy Merrill, this young guy with paint-splattered arms has a big future.

Moya teaches drawing and painting, part of Hoover's Visual and Performing Arts Academy (VAPA), one of the academic-interest programs required of every student.

At the El Cajon Boulevard campus for six years, Moya said, “You're always looking for that one student” and Marquez was the one:

“Mr. Moya told me, 'You were born to one thing, and that's to paint.' ”

On a midweek afternoon, the friendly and articulate Marquez was toiling as a teacher's assistant in Merrill's classroom, wearing a black VAPA T-shirt. It's there the young artist is provided space and extra time for projects, including a deeply-felt painting that hangs in the school's main office.

ARTIST: Angel Marquez, 18, senior WORK SPACE: Hoover High School, City Heights MENTORS: Ron Moya, Jeremy Merrill, teachers QUOTE: “I see things and capture the beauty. If I get depressed, it'll be a sad one.”

Marquez is soft-spoken and thoughtful explaining a new work called “16 Candles,” a birthday gift for his girlfriend, who attends Lincoln High. In it, a red-haired woman is holding a clock.

Already, his paintings have been featured in group shows at North Park's Art Produce Gallery, Sister Lodge and the City Heights Educational Collaborative. He's sold some, too, one for $350.

“At first, I didn't want to sell,” he said. “It was my baby and I couldn't let it go.” But he did: “With $350, I went to the art store and bought more paints and brushes.”

Being an artist, he said, “is life but it's more; it's a way to discover myself. I'm searching for something and every time I paint I get closer to it.”

This is a teenager with an emerging inner life who expresses it not only through painting but also strumming the guitar and crafting poetry, “sometimes sad, sometimes beautiful.”

These days, he said, “everything is going good. It's more happy stuff, but for awhile I wondered how I would get through it all.” That includes what he calls “economics” and feeling “I'd have to get a job and help out more (at home) and not paint. Also, I was a little lonely.” Marquez's dad lives in Tecate.

Marquez's work rose another level after a Moya-led field trip to Los Angeles' J. Paul Getty Museum. “Everything I do is influenced by what I've seen,” he said, “the colors of Chagall, the figures and line work of Picasso and landscapes like Monet, my favorite Impressionist.

“The Monet (the cathedral painting), the colors, the blues. For me, this was something that lasts forever. I want to paint something so that some kid could be as inspired as I was.”

Marquez remembers “drawing since I was small. My mom taught my older brother (now a truck driver) to make circles. In her eyes, he was meant to be the artist and he never liked it because he was forced. I used Crayolas, loved color.”

His Uncle Gabriel, a university professor in Mexicali, “has been a father figure during my rebellious youth and bought me my first guitar,” said Marquez. And Moya, too, has served that role, “a pillar of strength,” said the pupil of the teacher.

Graduating this year, Marquez has deep feelings for this school with its great, diverse mix of students and dedicated staff. “Hoover is where I discovered my love: to paint,” he said. “I look back and remember I didn't believe I was going to do it. Teachers encouraged me. Sometimes, I'd think my painting wasn't that good and Mr. Moya would say 'They are good' and I'd want to come the next day with a better painting.”

At home, not far from school, sometimes he'd paint “12 hours straight, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. My feet would hurt because I'd stand.” He'd create accompanied by music (Metallica to Coldplay to The Strokes) and sometimes the TV (“Family Guy”).

Marquez is still uncertain what's next in his life but has dreams of Los Angeles' Otis College of Art and Design with a double major in art and architecture (Frank Gehry, who designed downtown L.A.'s Walt Disney Concert Hall, is a hero).

A stroll around Hoover's campus and there's Marquez' mural in the music building dedicated to “the memory of Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, (poet) Pablo Neruda and all my inspirations” and the office painting called “My Love Cannot Fly.” It was motivated by “one girl who liked me but she didn't like me the same way I liked her. I thought she did and then she went with my best friend.”

The heartbreak of an artist.