UPDATE ART STATEMENT/BIO - VALENTINA PENA

Biography 

Valentina Pena-Figueroa is an 24 year old Artist & Graphic Designer born in New Jersey. Raised by a Peruvian mom and a Bolivian dad. She is currently studying for her BFA Painting & Drawing major at New Jersey City University. Her work focuses on digital design, which is mostly doing posters, flyers, logos, and image retouching, and handmade art like drawing with graphite, color pencils, painting with gouache, oil, and mixed media design. She is a creator of very expressive works which look at issues of emotion, identity, cultural representation, personal experience and nature. She is still discovering new ways to do art, especially digitally, she once tried using ceramic and realized she’s very good at it, but most importantly, she is still trying to find her own style and see how she can make an impact in a cartoonish way but also meaningful.

Artist Statement

My work focuses on digital design, like flyers, posters, and typography. I also love painting and drawing, which I always wanted to go forward and improve more my skills; I like doing collages and use mixed media. I’m into subjects that are very important but they are not given the attention they deserve; for example, nature, mental health, and identity. In my work, I mostly show visuals that are playful and at the same time have a more in depth message. I think that combining words and images can do something huge together in a very powerful form of communication. Through my work, I like to show emotions through different real life experiences, such us relationships, personal growth, identity, memories, small moments, conversations, or feelings that we carry with us over time.

I got into drawing in a very young age, and at that time, I didn’t have an influence and I was just drawing what I liked, but I realized that there were artists that have the same interests or style as me like Ben Lewis Giles who I look up to for his simple, very strong, and memorable ideas. One side of me is very into drawing cartoons, influenced by anime characters, Disney cartoons which I grew up watching them all the time, I always said that I would like to become a cartoonist, but I mostly focus on graphic design and trying to start drawing digitally, and I would consider it as personal challenge that I would like to accomplish and see how it goes.