I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember. It was my first language before I could speak. I learned how to draw from observation and from my imagination. I learned that I could draw portraits of my abusers and tormentors and that they would stop. That I could draw pictures of my family and friends from memory and always have them with me.

When I first started painting I didn’t know how. I made paintings to teach myself how to paint and I filled my canvas with what drawing had taught me. When I learned how to make painting I became a performance artist. Now I dismantle myself through my paintings to remake myself.

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ABOUT V. MALDONADO:
V. Maldonado is a multidisciplinary artist, freelance curator, and writer who lives and works in Portland, OR.

Born in 1976 in Changuitiro, Michoacán, Mexico, they grew up in the Central San Joaquin Valley of California in a family of migrant field laborers. Formerly the Assistant Dean for Diversity and Inclusions at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Maldonado holds a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the California College of Art (2000), and their MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005).

Deploying both traditional media including painting, printmaking and drawing alongside contemporary strategies such as performance, installation and intervention, Maldonado expresses the power of identity to author experience and perception. Their work is included in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, the Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA, the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, TX and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR.