Angela’s Story
Angela Soliz is a fine artist, acrylic painter, educator who helps people uncover their identity and build purpose-driven lives from the inside out. Angela has 20 years of experience painting with acrylics and teaching. She is a teaching artist with Free Arts Arizona, an organization dedicated to working with kids in the foster care system and also teaches at The Drawing Studio and serves as adjunct faculty at Pima Community College. With a multidisciplinary background and a passion for climbing mountains—both literal and metaphorical—Angela brings a grounded, courageous approach to personal and creative transformation through art... ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Artist Statement:
As an artist, I contribute to the project of human dignity through the exploration of self-liberation. My goal is to capture the essence of ecstatic joy, in visual form. I have known feelings of profound extreme despair, grief, loss, heartbreak, shame and apathy but I had forgotten their opposites. Painting is my way to articulate wonder, joy, radical acceptance and other intense high sensation emotions that are avoided and subjugated. In this way, the act of painting is the practice of freedom. An exploration into the embodiment of ecstatic joy.
I use the language of the desert of Southern Arizona and my visual vocabulary is also heavily influenced by my Chicano roots and the cultural practice of magical realism.
Each painting carries the energetic vibration of freedom and the hope that it may remind the viewer of their own wonder, courage and inner divinity. It is imperative to the project of human dignity that we all individually remember the freedom we already have inside of us.
The Tucson Gallery Asked Each Artist The Same Questions To Get To Know Them Better
Where did you grow up?
Tucson, AZ
Tell us about your family
Family is everything. I come from a large family and I have been blessed to also choose those I call family. I am so grateful for the friends and family I have in my life. I am inspired by them each and every day. My friends are family and my life wouldn’t work without the love and support of my friends and loved ones.
Do you have pets, if yes, tell us about them?
I have house plants, not home enough for pets but I dream of a dog I can take camping
When did you know that you would be an artist?
When I was 7 I built a three story doll house with furniture out of construction paper. That was the moment I knew I was different, I saw things differently and that I would be an artist. I didn’t know what kind of artist but I knew I was meant to work with color and shape and texture and imagination.
What is your favorite media to work with?
I love acrylic paint because of the physicality it offers and the speed at which I can paint. I use my whole body to paint, and often work on multiple canvases at once. I love the brightness of the colors and the layering effects that acrylic paint offers. I work with modeling paste to build up the base of the paintings, before I start layering color and shape. Texture adds so much nuance and story and mirrors the imperfect quality of life itself. I love the unpredictability that starting with texture offers- life is what you make it and with painting I get to enjoy the thrill of improvisation, experimentation and curiosity.
What do you do when you’re not doing the voodoo that you do?
When I’m not painting, I’m climbing rocks. I love sport climbing and bouldering. I’m currently learning trad climbing and training for the AMGA guide certification course.