Week 7 Linda Vallejo

Linda Vallejo is an acclaimed Chicana painter, sculptor, printmaker. Vallejo was born in East Los Angeles and graduated from Whittier College and also studied lithography at the University of Madrid. Vallejo received her MFA degree from California State University, Long Beach in 1978. Born into a military family, her father served as colonel in the Air Force and as a diplomat and she consequently spent much of her growing up years traveling with her family throughout the Untied States and Europe. At the young age of seven, Vallejo had already determined she wanted to ge to college and become an artist. In the early 1960's Vallejo was in Montgomery, Alabama at a volatile time that the public schools were just being integrated, and the riots and violence affected her deeply.

Vallejo has worked in printmaking and sculpture but her present medium of choice is in painting. She describes herself as "an indigenous Chicana" and as such, her work is highly symbolic and allegorical and is infused with Native American, Mexicana, and Chicana spiritual traditions. She mentioned that her artwork revolves around her dual experiences as a woman and a Chicana living in the twenty first century and studying the ancient indigenous traditions of Mexico and the Americas. She have worked to discover woman in her modern and ancient place as a source of strength, love, and integrity. She believe that all women are a part of the earth and can be inspired by a relationship with and through nature.

All in all, her formative years were spent in far flung locations throughout the United States and Europe. During her artistic grounding, She became increasingly immersed in the Chicano/Latino arts and indigenous communities – experiences that informed her cultural perspectives and her art practice. It has taken her entire artistic career to fuse an image that defines her multicultural experience of the world.