Paula Valenzuela is an established artist with her life in San Francisco Bay Area and her heart in her hometown of Santiago in Chile. Paula's work is recognized by collectors and admired by other artists from the Bay Area. For Paula art is her own therapy, self-discovery and way to connect with the local community. She calmly explains her work in the soothing voice of an ex-clinical psychotherapist, with an exotic, Chilean accent.
The Paula process is almost archeological. As she says, she builds paintings in layers. She pours layers of liquid acrylic paint onto canvases then paints polygonal shapes or spirals. Paula is a true mixed media artist. In her paintings, she uses acrylics, resins, pigments, minerals, rust, varnishes, gels, oil sticks and cold wax. Paula's technique is tactile. She plays with the texture of painting, endlessly editing the surface. Before the paint can dry, Paula is back on it. She scratches the artwork, tears paper layers, makes dents and new marks. She removes layers and adds new layers again.
Paula's paints with earthy colors, tones of Chilean desert and romantic Chilean skies. Paula's artwork is dramatic but also inviting. Accident is part of Paula's artistic process. Her paintings are like abstract dreams that tap into shared subconsciousness. Revealed layers in her paintings show her past actions, new layers point to the future. Only dried paint drips remind me that I’m still looking at a painting, rather than a complex desert dream. The names of her paintings fit perfectly: Dream Diary, What is Behind?, You've Been Here Before, Monkey Mind!.
During pandemic times Paula created a dramatic body of work named Collective Grief Collection. These artwork are much darker with names like Pandemic Landscape, Isolation or Mountain of Grief. There is a sense of hope she captures in artworks named Healing, Interconnected and Rain of Light.
Finally, Paula is also not afraid of new media trends. In January 2022, her solo exhibition The Space in Between, was entirely in virtual space.
