Artists Statement/Bio updated

Bio: 

Angelica Verdaguer is a multimedia artist based in North Bergen, NJ. She is working towards her BFA in Illustration at New Jersey City University. She enjoys using watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, pastel, and oil paint. In 2024 her work was exhibited in NJCU in the group exhibitions: Wish you were here and Home here. Growing up in a Hispanic household gave her the ability to see different women’s perspectives and strives to give the viewers a peek into the female gaze with clear brushstrokes and raw emotion, using figure painting to showcase an appreciation of women’s bodies. She realized she wanted to become an artist when she saw all the beautiful and inspiring pieces at museums for the first time. She focuses on portraits works primarily in oil paint and gouache. 

Artists Statement: 

    Creating art has allowed me to pour all my emotions into each piece and is something I would like to bring into my daily life. I've been blessed to have so many great mentors and role models for me to look up to and be inspired by continuously. They have all helped jump start my interest by pushing me to always become a better artist than the day before and to always accept constructive criticism.  I work with various mediums, such as gouache, watercolor, colored pencil, oil, charcoal, pastels, digital art. My favorites are oil, gouache, and digital art as of late. My process in the beginning is often a bit scattered, but as I'm working through it I’ll get more organized. Coming from a conceptual perspective is what I work towards, but I always find myself leaning towards a more emotion based work. A lot of my work recently has been about identity and landscapes. I use bright colors with somber expressions to bring that forward.  

As an artist I'm very interested in trying as many mediums as possible, and different forms of art has always interested me.  I would like my work to be primarily seen by women because some of my paintings are through the female gaze. I hate when women are over-sexualized in some forms of art and when children are made to be adults.  I'm working on a four piece series about women eating mens hearts. Two will be oil paintings and the other two will be digital and mixed media. What inspires me is the words left unspoken when viewing a piece for the first time, also how deeply the viewer is impacted. What really moves me to continue creating is to have my art to look back on and see my progress grow slowly. My favorite part of the process is when i lose all the stiffness I have in the beginning and just create freely. I love fixing the mistakes later, or letting them become a part of the piece.