Telling Stories with Images: Memory and the Quest of History with Vincent Valdez

Vincent Valdez says he began drawing when he was four and "hasn't looked back." We are the happy recipients of his forty-four years of learning to "tell a story through images."

He happily cuts against the grain of contemporary art, he says, and though he didn't start out with the idea of critiquing what Gore Vidal calls "the United States of Amnesia," he can't turn away from what he sees.

Rich in detail, his images wake the viewer from somnambulance. If, three days later, that viewer, still haunted by Valdez's powerful work, looks up more about his subject matter, then Valdez considers he has made a small contribution to ameliorating the "trauma of living in 21st century America."

His efforts are very large indeed, painted with the deft strokes of one who remembers his Mexican-American heritage, all the while proclaiming his "American" voice as well.

Vincent's artist statement: "I create images as instruments to probe the past in order to reveal an immediacy to what is occurring today. To remark on a universal struggle within various socio-political arenas and eras. I am alarmed by the denial of history. I will continue to create counter-images, to impede the social amnesia that incites our fateful desire to repeat it. I offer this work as a report. My visual testimony of transformation, hope, love and survival in twenty-first century America."

Vincent’s website is here.  Vincent’s 2020 PBS American Masters Special: Vincent Valdez: The Beginning is Near can be found here.

And, take a little time to browse Studio Aesculapius,  here you may find something fresh in what may have been stale.

Artists Telling Stories Podcasts feature the stories of artists and the art of stories. We seek the personal stories of artists—their journeys—and the impact of their art on their own well-being and on those who encounter their work.

As the language of humanity, art tells stories of inspiration, hope, and healing even as it acknowledges the hurt and despair that afflicts us all.

Hosts Edward Dupuy and Gene Beyt draw out our human stories in the hope that in their telling, artists will offer a new story of humanity for you, the listener.

Learn more at StudioAesculapius.com.