Painter Emily Keyishian keeps busy working on large commission in the garage of her Piedmont home. She’s also an actor who [appeared] onstage in “A Very Hitchcock Christmas” in San Francisco this [past] weekend.
“It’s funny, because I have two personalities, right? There’s the painter personality, and then there’s the actor personality,” she says. “They even have separate Instagram accounts.”
Often working simultaneously on acting and painting projects, she wouldn’t have it, or expect it, any other way.
“It’s bananas to juggle so many things, but I think artistically, it probably feeds me,” she says.
Through the years, her paintings have been seen in San Francisco at Hunters Point Shipyard’s Open Studios or in the de Young Open at the de Young Museum.
Theatergoers may have seen her onstage at the Phoenix Theatre, Dance Mission Theater or UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Playhouse. She’s also appeared in commercials and films such as “Werewolf Serenade.”
“I’m always auditioning and getting myself out there and still figuring out the theater world and the film world of the Bay Area,” she says.
Keyishian, who moved from the East to the West Coast over 20 years ago, initially considered focusing on just one art form in the Bay Area, devoting more time to painting and pressing the pause button on acting. That plan backfired, but in the best of ways.
“I was pulled back in, making connections here with the theater people that I was meeting,” she says.
She decided to establish herself as both a visual artist and an actor, and hasn’t looked back since. She’s also learned to just go with the flow when it comes to creative endeavors.
“When I try to make some kind of organized decision, like, ‘OK, I’m not going to accept any jobs’ or ‘I’m just going to focus on this,’ it’s inevitable [that] someone will call me or send me an email and be like, ‘I have this piece that I want you to do,’” she explains.
In addition to the painting she’s working on for a San Francisco client, Keyishian’s work can be seen at Belvedere Tiburon Library in “Art: Pairings and Echoes,” a group exhibition on view through Jan. 7. She’ll also have a piece in the library’s “Abstracting Nature” show opening Jan. 15.
Her paintings, featuring an array of colors and circular shapes evoking cell structures, reference her Armenian and Jewish heritage,
“My work is really connected to the biological — how and where we fit in the world, how we make our way around,” she explains.
This [past] weekend, she switched gears with her role in “A Very Hitchcock Christmas,” a compilation of five Alfred Hitchcock film-themed holiday plays, each about 12 minutes, presented by PlayGround, a playwrighting incubator and theater community hub.
“It’s the distilling down of some of these very serious movies into heightened, goofy performances,” says Keyishian.
In 2026, she looks forward to merging her art forms in “Broken Borders” at the PlayGround Solo Performance Festival. Her piece is about a trip to Turkey in which she, her husband and two sons searched for the village her grandfather was from, to honor of her family’s surviving the Armenian genocide.
It was a meaningful experience she’s ready to share with an audience: “It’s a culmination of the two worlds coming together — performing, talking about my family history and my art,” she says.
“Broken Borders” is at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 18; 7 p.m. Jan. 24 and 8:30 p.m. Feb. 7 at Potrero Stage. Admission is free; $10-$30 donation suggested. Visit https://playground-sf.org/solofest/.
“Art: Pairings and Echoes” continues through Jan. 7 at the Belvedere Tiburon Library, 1501 Tiburon Blvd, Belvedere Tiburon. Visit beltiblibrary.org/.
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