Paintings Give Us a Glimpse into the Lives of Others by the Things They Own

It’s said that we can infer the per­son­al­i­ty of oth­ers sim­ply by what they own and how tidy (or untidy) their space is. Since that’s the case, there’s much to be gleaned from still life art. The objects and their arrange­ment offer a glimpse into the lives of those who cre­at­ed it. This is is noth­ing new; in part, it’s the crux of why we study objects of the past—to learn about the cul­tures and peo­ple in which they existed.

Artist Anna Valdez was on an arche­o­log­i­cal dig in Ire­land when she “first dis­cov­ered her skill for art mak­ing.” There, she was encour­aged to keep a sketch­book of the site and cre­ate scale draw­ings and maps. “Visu­al­ly rein­ter­pret­ing these ‘aban­doned sites,’ ” her artist state­ment says, “allowed Valdez to explore the con­nec­tion between anthro­po­log­i­cal and artis­tic meth­ods of cat­a­loging and record-keeping.”

Anna’s con­tem­po­rary paint­ings explore our rela­tion­ship between what we own and our cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. Fill­ing her com­po­si­tions with plants, tex­tiles, and oth­er keep­sakes, the paint­ings oscil­late between still life and portraiture.