Alderete, Nina
About the artist
Nina Alderete is a visual artist based in Burien, Washington. Her small-scale collage paintings pursue raw emotion and aim to disclose societal expectations and pressures. Her art practice focuses on creating easy, stylized facades that break apart on closer examination. Each piece is designed to leave questions about what is kept hidden, gender, and how these influences define existence.
She holds a BA from the University of California Santa Cruz, an MFA in Painting from Central Washington University, and an MS in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of the Pacific.
“I make surreal collage paintings focusing on emotion and internal personal logic. Materials such as beads, collage, fabric, wax, and thread help build a blank landscape to frame surreal figures. Figures are given new personas by changing their faces to inanimate objects to expose their innermost thoughts and emotions. Handwritten and typed text is added to each painting. The text, for me, is when the painting turns into art. It is like the lyrics of a song you can’t stop thinking about or the phrase in a book that rolls around your head for months. The collage paintings are painted, drawn, hand-sewn, beaded, and waxed. The uneven hand-sewn edges extend over the varnished sides of a wood panel. Cold wax is added between the layers of paper to create a milky, soft sheen, and wrinkled surface. “ -Nina Alderete
