This series comes from a place where I was examining women who have passed through my life and the impact they have had on my visual expression. I developed a body of work comprised of twenty-seven paintings created during a six-month period while at an artist residency. In re-creating faces from my past, I tried to capture their being and what they were communicating through their eyes. I executed a series of marks and gestures using a mix of materials such as enamel and acrylic paint, charcoal, graphite, chalk and china markers. This series culminates in several self-portraits that reflect past circumstances, memories, dreams and illnesses.
Juliana Vallejo is a process-focused artist. Working primarily in painting and drawing, she expresses herself on large surfaces, with many works being life-size or larger. Her approach is highly physical, regularly moving the works from the floor to the wall and back and using her bare hands and feet to apply different thicknesses of paint. The interaction between artist, medium and surface plays an essential role in her art making. Her approach to art is a constant self-exploration, a way of getting in touch with herself and digging into her subconscious mind, her buried thoughts and ideas.
Juliana’s dedication to painting pushes her to constantly explore new media, new surfaces, and new ways of expressing herself through mark making, gestures and colors. She challenges the pictorial plane and the boundaries of the images on it, their movement and their way of interacting with their surroundings. She aims to express the complexity of humanity and to provide a path for viewers to connect with the work, themselves, and others.
Juliana Vallejo was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and currently lives in the Washington metropolitan area. She received her B.A. in Studio Art from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, where she was the recipient of the Undergraduate Research Grant for her project Abstract Experiment. As part of her practice she has completed artist residencies in Italy, Mexico, and the United States. At present she is an artist in residency at Red Dirt Studio in Mount Rainier, MD.