Anna Valdez

About the artist:

Anna Valdez is a multi-disciplinary artist who examines the relationship between objects, cultural formation, and collective consciousness. As she creates grand tableau in her plant filled studio, Valdez moves seamlessly between still life and landscape painting. She collects objects and makes new ones—throwing, firing, and glazing new ceramic vessels inspired by her ideas for paintings, new plants or taxidermy, recent trips, or works in progress. Traversing between collection, creation, observation, and fictionalization, Valdez works with saturated hues and surprising scale shifts. Layering the personal with the historical in dense compositions that collapse foreground and background, her works resemble immersive installations.

Valdez earned her BA in Anthropology and Art from University of California, Davis, and her MFA in painting from Boston University. Her work has been exhibited nationally at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR; North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, and Asheville Art Museum, in Asheville, NC;  NC, New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT; Cañada College in Redwood City, CA; Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco, CA; David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, CO; 1969 Gallery, Alexander Berggruen Gallery, and Nancy Margolis Gallery in New York, NY; and OCHI in Sun Valley, ID and Los Angeles, CA. Valdez’s work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Juxtapoz Magazine, New American Paintings, Artsy, and Artillery Magazine. Her work is included in various private and public collections including the, New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut, The Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia, American Museum of Ceramic Arts in Pomona, CA, Xiao Museum in China, the Phyllis & Ross Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University in Orange, CA, the Microsoft Art Collection in Seattle, WA, and Aritzia in Toronto, Canada. Valdez lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Artwork in exhibition:

Anna Valdez, Windowsill, 2017, Oil, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 55 x 55 in., Courtesy of the artist and Hashimoto Contemporary