Sara Valderrama

Artist Statement

I’ve been painting since 2024 when I left my short-lived tech career to follow my childhood dream of being an artist. I mostly work in acrylic, although I also love creating smaller watercolor pieces and sometimes venture into oils. I’m a loose realist and use a natural color palette with splashes of more vibrant hues, particularly blues and greens.

My artwork is a rumination on the power and vulnerability of naturality through animals. We gravitate to animals because they are our closest and kindest mirror. In their selfhood, we see our own in a softer light, without the judgements and contrivances of society. We appreciate the strength and leathered beauty in a lumbering rhino without thinking it’s ‘too large’. We admire the fearsome flamboyance of a rooster protecting his flock without questioning his ‘manliness’. We recognize the loving diligence of a mother mallard guiding her ducklings across a busy pond without considering her ‘overbearing’. Animals are “us” enough that we recognize ourselves in them, but “them” enough that we don’t decide that their naturalness isn’t enough. They give us an untarnished vantage point from which to celebrate our existence as it is, instead of as it “should” be.