Vincent Valdez

Vincent Valdez blends large, representational paintings with contemporary subject matter to create images of American identity that confront injustice and inequity while imbuing subjects with empathy and humanity.

Project Focus:

Combining portraiture, Know Your Rights information, and archival materials, Vincent Valdez will remind communities across the state of the power that Texans have to create a more just and inclusive future.

Biography:

Vincent Valdez blends large, representational paintings — the scale of which recall Western traditions of history painting as well as mural painting and cinema — with contemporary subject matter. He focuses on subjects that explore his observations and experience of life in the twenty-first century. The results are powerful images of American identity that confront injustice and inequity while imbuing his subjects with empathy and humanity. Valdez states, “My aim is to incite public remembrance and to impede distorted realities that I witness, like the social amnesia that surrounds us all.”

A recipient of the Ford and Mellon Foundations Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors (2016), as well as residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting (2005), the Vermont Studio Center (2011), the Kunstlerhaus Bethania Berlin Residency (2014), and the Arion Press’ King Residency (2023), Valdez currently lives and works between Houston and Los Angeles. Exhibitions and Collections include: The Ford Foundation, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and The National Portrait Gallery, among others. He lives and works in Houston and Los Angeles.

Website: www.vincentvaldezstudio.com/
Social Media: Instagram

Previous Work Samples:

Artist Statement:

I create images as instruments, to probe the past and present, in order to examine what is occurring today. I am alarmed by the denial of history. I will continue to create counter-images that impede the distorted realities that I witness — like the social amnesia which fogs our collective memory and enables our fateful desire to repeat the patterns of history. My aim is to incite public remembrance. I began this pursuit early in life, as a young muralist working in the streets of my community. This reverential experience defined my early perception about the powerful and transformative relationship between image and viewer. Thus began my lifelong commitment to making images. About people. For people. Today, I blend large, representational paintings and drawings — the scale of which recall Western traditions of history painting as well as mural painting and cinema — with contemporary subject matter. The results are powerful images of American identity that confront injustice and inequity while instilling subjects with empathy and humanity. I offer this work as a report. My visual testimony about an epic, unfolding tale of hope, struggle and survival in twenty-first century America.