Amanda Valdez is a mid-career studio and research-based artist best known for mixed-media paintings which incorporate sewing, embroidery, fabric, oil stick, and other paint materials. Her process begins through sketching compositions, and her stylized forms reference landscape, physical experiences, archaeological objects and sites that she encounters in day-to-day life, research, and travel. Her paintings reflect the history and memory that the body holds in its somatic makeup: scars, sags, wrinkles, marks, symmetries, and asymmetries. She uncovers these through the act of drawing, accessing a deep body of stored shapes, and personal experiences in the process of developing her work. Her recent paintings utilize new techniques and materials from intricately woven threads to textured, layered oil stick which adds to the viscid acrylic drip forms and smooth velvety gouache. Amanda Valdez was born in Seattle, Washington in 1982 and lives in New York, New York. She earned an MFA from Hunter College, New York, New York and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.