Paula Valenzuela is a Chilean-born mixed media abstract artist based in Montevideo, Uruguay, with strong ties to the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work is process-driven and explores psychological depth, memory, and the relationship between containment and transformation.
With a background in clinical psychology and public health, Valenzuela approaches painting as an embodied, intuitive practice. Through layering, excavation, and erasure, her works reveal traces of time and inner experience, inviting quiet reflection and introspection.
SPANISH
Paula Valenzuela es una artista visual chilena de abstracción y técnica mixta, basada en Montevideo, Uruguay, con una estrecha vinculación con el Área de la Bahía de San Francisco. Su trabajo se centra en procesos intuitivos y en la exploración de la profundidad psicológica, la memoria y la transformación.
Con formación en psicología clínica y salud pública, aborda la pintura como una práctica corporal y sensible. A través de capas, sustracciones y veladuras, sus obras conservan huellas del tiempo y de la experiencia interna, invitando a una mirada pausada e introspectiva.
Statement
As an artist, I am deeply interested in the interplay between light and darkness within the human psyche. We all have aspects of ourselves that we present to the world, and others that remain hidden. My work explores this dynamic space, where inner and outer realities meet.
Through mixed media abstract painting, I investigate the tension between what contains and what is contained — a concept drawn from psychological theory and expanded into a broader ecological and existential framework. Layers are built, removed, excavated, and reassembled, allowing traces of previous gestures to remain visible. This process mirrors the way experiences, memories, and emotions are held within us, shaping what eventually surfaces.
My paintings emerge from an intuitive, embodied process rather than a predetermined image. Materials, textures, and marks interact over time, revealing structures that feel both organic and psychological. I am interested in that in-between state where form is not yet fixed — where something is still becoming.
Ultimately, my work invites a quiet encounter with what lies beneath the surface: the unseen forces that hold, protect, and transform us, and the delicate balance between exposure and containment.