Biography

Commentary

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Artist Statement

Biography

Vallejo was born in Los Angeles in 1951. She had an early affinity for painting and as a child visited churches and museums during the years that her family lived in Europe, while her father was serving as an officer in the Air Force. She finished high school in Madrid, and then studied lithography at the University of Madrid. Upon returning to the States, Vallejo majored in art at Whittier College, graduating with a BFA in 1973, and went on to earn an MFA in printmaking from California State University at Long Beach in 1978. During her college years, Vallejo’s work reflected her interest in the art of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, focusing on the integration of painted religious imagery and architectural settings.

During the late 1970s, Vallejo began to connect with her family heritage, particularly the cultures of the indigenous peoples in both Mexico and in the whole of the Americas. For the past thirty years she has explored pre-Columbian art and history, and participated in Native American ceremony and spiritual practice. These retreats and teachings have deeply informed her work as an artist, and especially her current project, A Prayer For the Earth.

In 1980 Vallejo began working on the Tree People, a series of sculptures using rescued tree limbs covered with paper pulp that was formed into bas relief faces and forms. This group of over fifty works expressed humanity's oneness with both nature's vulnerability and resilience. In 1993, Vallejo created the Death of Urban Humanity: A World Without Soul, a series of gouaches drawing upon her study of ancient Mesoamerican culture, its synchronism with the Catholicism of the Spanish conquest, and environmental threats to contemporary urban life.

From 1990-95 Vallejo painted Women of Love and Integrity, a series of poetic images of women, which coincided with the birth of her two sons. In the years 1996-2004, the artist completed two suites of paintings, Nature and Spirit and Los Cielos, whose "fantastic realism", achieved with meticulously applied glazes, celebrated the living ocean, luminous skies, and stirring landscapes. The 2003 installation HOPE, In the Midst of War, Death, and Destruction responded to the events of 9/11 by juxtaposing the spirituality of nature with the violence of conflict, and used a central mandala with photographic images of a century of war.

First created in 2004 and altered in subsequent incarnations, A Prayer For the Earth, an installation of painting and sculpture, incorporates the major themes of Vallejo's work. Using elements from earlier series, as well as new pieces, it explores the complex bonds between humanity and the natural world, the degradation of the environment, and the fundamental and sacred relationship that we have with our planet.

A Prayer For the Earth was first shown at the Carnegie Museum, Oxnard, CA, and traveled to five other venues in California. Vallejo has exhibited her work at The Museum of Modern Art Museum, New York, The Armand Hammer Museum, The San Antonio Museum, The Mexico City Modern Art Museum, and many other institutions.