Interview: Vincent Valdez on Voids, the Studio Process, and American Symbols

Vincent Valdez, “The Strangest Fruit,” 2013, oil on canvas. Photo: Peter Molick

I went to see Vincent Valdez’s solo show, Just a Dream… at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) two weeks after the 2024 election. I had spent the prior month traveling across Texas, processing the before and after, reflecting on my fellow citizens, the subtle beauty of Texas, and what it meant to be American. In a moment when I was still trying to come to terms with whatever changes might lie ahead, I found it amazing to sit with Valdez’s works, which are all about looking hard, straight at the thing itself, no flinching in the gaze. One of the paintings that struck me the most was a self-portrait painted early in Valdez’s career, Red Ear (Twenty One Years) that sat near the entrance of the show. In it, the face is turned, in shadow with just the ear highlighted by the light coming in through a window. The work felt like it was right on the precipice, on the edge of something, and I was reminded of how we are suspended in a moment of waiting, not knowing how things will turn out, in our own collective American dream. 

The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed. 

Renee Lai (RL): When looking at the paintings and drawings, I’m struck by the power of empty space, the negative space in your images. It feels restrained, yet powerful, particularly in the Excerpts for John series and The Strangest Fruit paintings. In some of your prints, like the Somewhere in South Texas series, the negative space feels more atmospheric, reminding me of the Texas sky and the expanse of that desert landscape, the heat of the Texas sun. What is your decision-making process when it comes to constructing the composition, especially as it relates to negative space?  

Vincent Valdez (VV): For me, this void is everything; it is almost as important as the figures themselves. It speaks further than the actual subjects I’m rendering in some cases. My work is heavily involved with collective memory, whether it is personal memory or the lack of memory within a collective society, which becomes that void. This is my way of encouraging the viewer to decide if these images, these stories, are fading away in the sense of being forgotten, or if they are reemerging from the void back into their own existence. Compositionally, I challenge myself to reinvent my approach to image-making so it doesn’t ever feel repetitive. The void becomes a powerful symbol for me. You see it in work like Excerpts for John which I’m so personally connected to. That void is a foggy, hazy mirage, a dreamlike sequence. I used it to describe what I felt and remembered that morning in 2012. It was freezing, and raining, and I was standing at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, watching my best friend get delivered home in a flag-draped casket. The void becomes the entire engine in this unfolding visual tale.  

RL: I like what you said about the void as a place where figures can either reemerge or fade into memory. When I was looking at your work, I always felt that they were reemerging, rather than fading. I feel very much that the figures are coming forth, reanimated. It may have something to do with that glow you have in some of the work.  

VV: My play between the flat versus the graphic, detailed areas create a sort of buzz, this tension between two applied techniques. It warps the senses between spatiality and depth. It also manipulates the way I can keep your eye attentive to certain areas, like in The Strangest Fruit series. The white void as background keeps your eye hypnotized by the levitating figure. It also presents no horizon line — no background, no world, no history, no memory, complete erasure. These bodies are suspended in time, glimpsed in an eternal limbo, a purgatory-like state. They just hang there. It is up to you, the viewer, to see them and to acknowledge their existence and story, thereby keeping their spirit of struggle alive which can eventually set them free. 

RL: The people in The Strangest Fruit feel touched with a little bit of holiness, even though they’re not in comfortable positions. They seem to be transcending to some sort of better place.  

VV: In The Strangest Fruit series, there are no immediate or obvious signs of violence depicted. The rendered figures appear floating in almost ballet-like poses, creating a slow-motion sequence of spinning, flipping, dangling, and contorting. The emotive body portrayed in dramatic poses is something I discovered as a curious child spending time inside the Catholic Church. Amongst the physical and spiritual angst displayed in cinematic images like the Crucifixion or Stations of the Cross, there is also an eternal grace and reconciliation that plays out in these religious narratives as its characters seek out their salvation by searching for their light. I remember sitting in Catechism class and I kept myself busy by obsessively studying these images and the ways in which they constructed stories. These early experiences played an important role in my development as an image maker and as a storyteller. The painted light that emanates from the figures in The Strangest Fruit is spiritual but transcends religious iconography. Is it a beam of light ignited and radiating from resilience, passed down through memory, and born in the struggles of people? Or, is it an invasive spotlight projected from a watch tower, a prison yard, vehicle headlights, or burning flames? It is up to you, the viewer, to decide.   

Vincent Valdez, “Since 1977,” 2019, lithography crayon on paper. Photo: Peter Molick

RL: How do you know how much information to give in an image? I’m thinking about the Since 1977 series — I love how you just see the forehead, maybe the eyes of each president. It’s a view that is very unfamiliar in terms of presidential portraits because it almost implies that you’re looking down on them. It took me a moment to figure out who these people are.  

VV: Since 1977 depicts every president during my lifetime, beginning with Jimmy Carter. I created this work as a means to encourage critical thought in a society that works overtime to discourage critical thinking. Art reaches its highest potential when it enables us to see, think, and feel differently, especially when we feel most blinded and numbed by the world and its absurd realities. In this way, I still believe that art can and must be of service to others in some small way. Perhaps this is just my natural inclination to go against trends and question everything.  

This series takes a very familiar, highly saturated, patriotic, heroic, and overly glorified theme of our American Empire – The American President. By re-presenting this legacy as a counternarrative rather than as the officially prescribed “divine, democratically anointed, freedom-seeking saviors for all mankind,” I reduce them in these portraits to wrinkled foreheads and facial expressions as seen through their eyes, eyebrows, hairlines, and hairpieces. Their legacy and lineage are reduced back down to our level. Human. Shame, guilt, fear, uncertainty, mediocrity, vengeance, denial, delusion, etc. become evident when we strip away the veil of our American mythology about who we are and what we represent. 

For the viewer who pays close attention, a subtle and gradual decline begins to take shape from left to right, a sinking effect. I completed the series in 2019. At this point, the evenly centered portraits are disrupted by a turning of Trump’s back within their presidential and systemic lineage. The series ends with a single black void used as background for each portrait. Filled with constellations as dimming stars, this effect was created by drawing with lithograph crayons on paper. Once again, this void becomes a powerful statement in itself. As Americans, we are indoctrinated very early in life to place complete trust and belief in the American system and its powerful owners and leaders, in exchange that we, the people, are bearers of our own democratic destinies and hopeful fortunes. Now, in 2024, America still finds itself painfully trapped between the myth of who it thinks it is and the reality of who it really is. The normalized delusion in America will continue to rip itself at the seams. Nonetheless, one must continue to stand and speak up for others and for our most vulnerable. As the great Howard Zinn once said, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” You have to take a stand, you must speak up, and you must keep aware of the world outside your own on a daily basis and beyond a single Election Day.  

Vincent Valdez, “Eaten,” 2018-19, oil on canvas and bronze.  Photo: Peter Molick

RL: My next question is more studio-oriented. You briefly mentioned the games you play in the studio. What are they? What are the things that you tell yourself in the studio?  

VV: Fortunately, there’s never been a shortage of ideas for me. The clock is short. As I get older, there’s a shortage of endurance, especially when working on a large scale. I started young and have been doing this for so long now that I have to find ways to keep myself stimulated, curious, and challenged. Walking into this exhibition, the viewer can see the various techniques, formats, and mediums that I consistently shift between: printmaking, painting, drawing, sculpture, and some video work. I set up stations for myself in the studio. At this point, I average about a year per project. I’ve grown slower, but my ideas have also become much more ambitious. After each project, I force myself to wipe the slate clean and find ways to move in opposite and new directions. I aim to avoid becoming the type of artist that becomes predictable. I feel it necessary to constantly reinvent myself as a means of keeping an audience interested as opposed to, “Well, I think I know what this work will look or be like, a continuation of his last three bodies of work.” Not every artist must work in this way. It just works for me. Keeps me on my toes. On a Monday I might spend 8-10 hours oil painting; the next day I may walk in and not feel like painting, so I’ll focus on drawing. I’ll make a sequence of drawings, like my Amnesia series in the exhibition, where I set a timer in the studio and it becomes my race against a ticking clock.  

Painting is still by far the most demanding activity for me. As my paintings continue to grow in scale and concept, I view it more and more as if I am trying to construct and then steer a giant ship on my own. I begin as a captain charting the course journey. As the image rapidly begins to develop in scale, palette, and idea, I am forced to run down and control masts and pulleys. After a few months in, sometimes I feel like I’ve run off course and/or into some storms. I have to jump off my scaffolding and run down into the engine room before the entire thing starts to sink and get it back on course again. It can be exhausting, but it’s always an adventure that keeps me moving. I need this intense stimulation otherwise I can lose interest quickly. For many years I worked in a very different manner, working only on one piece at a time. Until I reached the finish line, I wouldn’t think about anything else. I burnt out working this way. In 2020, I went to New Haven, CT for NXTHVN’s Fellowship Program, and it felt like a good moment to start over again. I began as many ideas as I could without focusing on the end results. After several years of working in this manner, I am ready to hit the reset button once again. Entering the studio with stacks of canvases staring back at me waiting to be completed can be overwhelming. At least I tried something new. Now, I will find another way of working.

RL: This is a question for the painters out there — you have a lot of beautiful blacks and grays that make up the negative spaces. Do you have any favorite color combos to mix these neutrals? 

Vincent Valdez, “Just a Dream (In America),” 2020-21, oil on canvas, audio component, two bricks. Photo: Peter Molick

VV: My secret is nothing special. Titanium white and ivory black. I’m in love with grisaille — it’s a beautiful, lush palette that delivers each time when its capabilities and materials are understood properly. Black, white, and gray tones are as gorgeous and visually important as any other color palette. 

RL: There’s that beautiful hint of red in Excerpts for John in the flags.  

VV: Yes, and in the boxer’s knees, knuckles, scars, and wounds in Just a Dream (In America). This is something I began doing while at RISD, highlighting ears and nostrils, eyes, the fleshiest sensitive parts of the human figure. Eventually, it evolved into the concept of mortality and being human and alive, with blood pulsating, even in our darkest, numbest moments, hidden in shadows and gray tones. I determine which images should be executed in a black-and-white palette based on their context and subject matter. Excerpts for John, Just a Dream (In America), The City, each of these ideas relied on a black and white palette as an extension of the stories being told, blurring the line between past and present, myth and memory, dream, and reality. This lush black and white palette with subtle red tints has become a signature for me over the years.  

Installation view of “Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream…” at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Photo: Peter Molick

RL: Process and collection feel emphasized in the retrospective. I’m thinking of the boxer painting Just a Dream (in America) resting on cement blocks, which is how I sometimes work in my own studio, the painting Supreme, which is in progress, and the downstairs room of drawings and flat files. I loved seeing some of the reference images on the wall labels and also in the flat files, and I particularly loved the books laid out down there. Can you talk about why you decided to highlight process? It felt like a very generous impulse to offer a behind-the-scenes peek, especially since many of the paintings are so finished. 

VV: This piece is the first time I publicly present a work in progress. I began this painting on the day the Supreme Court made their big Roe v. Wade announcement. I approach my work as documentation — putting it all down on record. It is my visual testimony and it marks a specific time and place in my own life and career, but also for all of us as a collective society. I have been slowly chipping away at this piece for over the past two years. There could not be a more perfect moment to share a work in progress like Supreme. We are all witnesses to the flux, the fractures, the uncertainty, restructuring, and re-examining of our contemporary American life and feeling the anxieties about how to resolve, self-edit, and complete the unfolding American tale.  

I refer to the downstairs room as a drawing chapel. There are flat files that I’ve had for 20 years that CAMH brought over and inserted into the exhibition. My mother was an amazing archivist. Some of these drawers contain my earliest drawings as a child. I couldn’t yet write my name, so my mom would sign and date them for me. She knew, as many mothers do, what my path would be. In this case, it is important to invite people to engage and interact hands-on within a museum setting, which is normally hands-off. A viewer opening each drawer is presented with various works and artifacts from inside my own studio and archives and provides a real glimpse into a chronological timeline of my image-making. It can be helpful for young artists to begin to understand the important reminder that the creative journey is not something that happens overnight. The life and career of any artist is a long, slow path that requires time and commitment over the course of a lifetime. I hope they can relate to my earliest stages and see themselves inside these archives. I really commend CAMH for agreeing to include this kind of experience for viewers. I think it presents a new approach, something unique and memorable for their audience. 

RL: I just love the flat files with the handwritten dates. I saw everybody pulling them out, and it is a process of discovery that reminds me of when I’m sorting through my own things in the studio. It gives people a peek into how your mind might work. I think the Supreme painting is like that too; you can see where it is blocked in, where it’s drawn in — it feels like a glimpse of how you get from A to Z.  

VV: It’s not magic. There’s a lot of framework that lies buried under each drawing and painting, so many preparations take place before start and completion and hold each image entirely together like a skeleton. Imagine the discovery of pulling away our own skin to see what lies underneath. Many people don’t fully understand how one constructs an image from beginning to end. Every artist must eventually learn to become a great editor. The push and pull tug of war is endless with each work. Making choices can be exhilarating and terrifying. My end results are so finely polished and unless you walked into my studio while I was working, you’d never know just how much history is buried underneath the final layers of paint.  

Installation view of “Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream…” at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Photo: Peter Molick

RL: I want to talk about titling. There are several suites of work titled The Beginning is Near, divided into three trilogies. That phrase, “the beginning is near”, is so interesting because “beginning” takes the place of “end.” When I think about beginnings, they are full of promise, a fresh start, and optimism, and there are times when I think wow, America really is a beautiful experiment; there is so much promise here in some ways. The paintings in the suite themselves are not necessarily optimistic — a modern-day Klan fills one wall in the show, the plurality of different Americans mourning fill another, and then there are three portraits of people on the middle triangular column. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but in the past, you have talked about painting as a way to look at a hard truth, that we should look at hard things rather than look away and forget. How does the act of painting, or making art, help you wrestle with such complicated and sometimes painful histories? In a much less elegantly phrased way, how do you look at painful things and still keep going?  

VV: Creating this work, especially when dealing with challenging, complicated, and difficult subjects, is the very act that helps me see more clearly and make sense of the world outside. It keeps me grounded. I never feel like these subjects are taking any kind of mental toll on me. This work enables me to search for meaning and to find traces of optimism left in people.   I appreciate that you understood the play and meaning behind the title, The Beginning Is Near: The City. This work was not intended to be about the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, in a way, was merely a ploy used to engage and challenge viewers to deeply consider the title The City as the real subject. The Beginning is Near counters the classic slogan, the end is nigh or the end is near. What if we challenged ourselves to think about the future in a different way? A new and very possible beginning in twenty-first-century America. Is this going to be a moment of awakening, enlightenment? The beginning of something better? Or, will America choose an opposite direction, the beginning of something darker, more sinister, like a rising curtain that is about to reveal and unleash a different path? 

I spent a full year in 2015 working on The City. The city is the main subject. The Klan gathering serves as gatekeepers around a city in twenty-first century America. For far too long, America has convinced itself that the threat of white supremacy exists with “those people in those far-off places at the fringes of democratic American society.” In 2015, it was clear to me that America was not ready to admit that covert methods and manifestations of white supremacy exist in almost every facet of American life, from courtroom to classroom, church pew to corporate office, gated communities to housing projects. The Beginning Is Near, An American Trilogy, Ch II: Dream Baby Dream is based on Muhammad Ali’s funeral which I watched unfold as I put the final touches on The City. The eulogists paying tribute to an American icon, defiant, Black, and Muslim, became a larger-than-life symbol in this series. I presented over a dozen portraits as a monumental grid, echoing the opening sequence of the classic television series, The Brady Bunch, the All-American family. In this new American family, standing behind podiums before a pair of microphones and in the aftermath of The City painting, nobody is speaking because nobody knows what to say.  

Another year later, I began asking, “Where do I/we go from here?” The Beginning Is Near, An American Trilogy, Ch III: The New Americans is the third and final chapter in this series. Over the past few years, I have been actively searching for and locating twenty-one Americans in the twenty-first century who in my opinion, are fighting the good fight. Not for fame, profit, or power, but because it is simply still the right thing to do. These selected individuals are mostly unknown to one another but are united in their efforts and commitment to help others. Unlike the first two chapters, this series has regained a color palette and is situated vertically, like standing pillars. I will continue working on this series until I reach twenty-one. In the forgotten spirit of the WPA movement, I want to use this third and final chapter to remind others that there is still plenty worth fighting for. These individuals remind me daily to continue to be the stubborn pulse in a dying heart, refusing to give in and give up. Instead, I get up and push forward.  

Just a Dream… is on view at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston until March 23, 2025.