Anna Valdez studied anthropology before training as a painter. On an
archaeological dig in Ireland she was asked to keep a sketchbook of the
site, drawing the objects to scale and mapping where each one was found.
The habit stayed.

She grows the plants, throws and glazes the vessels, and keeps the shells,
bones, and taxidermy that fill her Los Angeles studio. Most paintings begin
as an arrangement she builds in the studio. She paints from life, in her own
words, “but doesn’t adhere to it.” A vase she made in clay turns up inside a
canvas. Sometimes a vase that exists only on canvas gets made in clay
afterward, and painted again.

The work moves between oil on canvas, gouache on panel, ceramic,
monotype, and wallpaper, at sizes from a panel six inches wide to a canvas
nearly seven feet across. In 2026, for Spring Migration at Governors Island
Arts, her image was wrapped in vinyl around the hull of the Governors
Island ferry.

Her work has been shown at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the
Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, the New Britain Museum of American
Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Asheville Art Museum, and the
American Museum of Ceramic Art. It is held in the collections of the
Columbus Museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the
American Museum of Ceramic Art, among others.