Artist Bio
Rosanna Alvarez is an artist who lives poetically, while sharing her life lessons as an educator, poet, and facilitator throughout the Bay Area. She is an outspoken and art-loving Chicana, the first-born of nine siblings, a mother of three fierce guerreras (little warriors), and a trucker’s wife. Her life’s work is grounded in her mission to embrace personal power through creative inspiration.
As a community-taught multifaceted artist, she works in several mediums, including graphic design, block print, painting, mixed media, and ink work. As someone perpetually navigating in the gray areas of life, she finds solace in the power of black and white on paper --especially as a means toward self-healing and perpetual contemplation of life’s contradictions. She has illustrated three coloring books and counting. Her habitual code-switching is intentional as both an ode to her constantly displaced communities and a response toward their exclusion in mainstream spaces in spite of being resiliently present.
Artist Statement
“As an artist, my work seeks to elevate the collective voices of muxeres/womyn who inspire me through the essence of who they are – mujeres who challenge and defy by our mere existence, but also as a living legacy of the stories that have shaped us into who we have become both individually and collectively. Part of my process involves holding space for these collective voices in ways that encourage us to hear each other in the intersticios of comadrazgo (those informal spaces of connection and community grounded in the feminine). My work aims to capture the imagery of everyday activism, healing, and culture in the fullness of how it speaks to me, through: black and white images that hold the power of possibility, bold vibrant colors that illustrate beauty in the contrasts, the legacy of our ancestors, and the reclamation of how we de-center the narratives of the status quo. With every finished work, I seek to make each piece speak through simplicity. The challenge is in also having this simplicity speak layers symbolically as my artwork speaks to our fierce need to take up space unapologetically while thriving in the fullness of our authenticity.”
The Artist Portfolio
The portfolio is a surface-level sampling, reflecting the range of mediums worked in and serves as a reflection of how the artwork across mediums is in constant conversation with the heart of the artist. Each image featured in the portfolio below links to additional work in that category/collection.
