Sheldon Museum of Art Main Content

Valdez, Crying

The Crying Tree2010Acrylic on canvas48 1/4 × 60U-5740.2012University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Robert E. Schweser and Fern Beardsley Schweser Acquisition Fund, through the University of Nebraska FoundationThe Crying Tree by Patssi Valdez Patssi ValdezThe Los Angeles landscape figures prominently in Patssi Valdez’s serigraphs, mixed-media collages, and performance work. Here she represents her hometown in a more oblique manner than usual, offering us a surreal, dream-like scene. The Crying Tree depicts an eerie, anthropomorphic landscape that is paradoxically exuberant and melancholy. At the center of the canvas is the tree itself, a Daliesque figure that extends its limbs operatically, its flesh weeping. The surrounding vegetation appears to act in symphony: tears suggest themselves as a sort of music through which all nature communicates. American 1951Los Angeles, CA