Taylor Ana Valdez, born in 1994. Valdez's work builds imagined worlds populated by “wild beasts”, characters, instincts, impulses, fears, desires, and memories given physical form. Through their interactions, she explores the inner systems that shape how we experience ourselves and one another.

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Valdez thinks of painting as a cartography of consciousness. Each painting becomes a landscape where psychological and emotional realities can exist outside the body. Their relationships become a way of looking at the invisible forces that govern human experience.

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Valdez's paintings are primarily oil, although she sometimes incorporates other mediums to express a specific feeling. She often begins with a fragment of an imagined story or a quality of a character, allowing the world to reveal itself. The relationships between the characters emerge as she works.

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Through these paintings, Valdez is building a mythology of the psyche: a world where the invisible becomes visible, where inner life takes the form of creatures, landscapes, and encounters.

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Taylor's work has been featured in two solo exhibitions and numerous group shows throughout the United States.