Bio + StatementMy paintings are critical reflections of the landscape at the intersection of the divisions between land and observer, describing the nuances of structural interactions between the anthropogenic and natural. Within the pursuit of inventing wilderness visually and experientially, symbolism and archetypes of phenomena and living beings speak upon this platform for the imagination; the line between landscape’s indomitable physicality, magnitude, fragility, severity, and its mystique.
Working primarily in life-size scale, the panoramic dimensions of my paintings seek to invoke the physical presence of my subjects, blurring the lines between the simulated and visionary reality of their painted environments, and the immediate world outside the frame.
I engage the viewer in the multifaceted perspectival narrative of ecology and the ways in which natural disaster creates, destroys, and creates again the complex systems of entropy and organization, relating the delicate balance of fragility and endurance within nature. My paintings aim to question diametric spheres; those of real and unreal, settled and abandoned, natural and man-made and contest their separation.
Currently pursuing a BFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Valerie Mirra weaves ecology and painting with each work. As an immigrant, traveler, and avid outdoorswoman, Valerie Mirra’s relationship to landscape is in a state of constant flux and evolution. Valerie has maintained a devoted plein air practice around the world, including Eastern and Western Europe, Central America, the Middle East, Africa, the Eastern United States, and the West Coast from California to Alaska. Her figurative paintings are created directly from images produced throughout this on-site and research based practice, where she finds the capacity to look deeply and intimately into the landscape, experiencing wholeheartedly the extreme vulnerability of the self, the human, and the wild.