Portland State senior Adalia Rios is a BFA student who specializes in oil painting. Her art blurs the boundaries between horror and fantasy, giving life to otherworldly creatures with a gloomy intensity. Rios characterizes her works as both surrealist self-portraits and tangible expressions of mental illness, grief and isolation.
Originally from Mission Viejo, CA, Rios relocated to Portland three years ago. Currently she works for The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, and this year will be a curator for Sugar Cube Gallery—PSU’s BFA project workspace.
Portland State Vanguard spoke with Rios to learn more about her identity and art practice.
VG: Can you tell me about your upbringing and your family? Were you artistic as a child?
Rios: Yeah, I definitely was. I’ve always loved art. I had a class called “Meet the Masters” in elementary school. It was our allotted time per week to make art, and every single time was my favorite of the whole week.
One of my classmates came over [during that class] and was like, “Oh my gosh that’s amazing. You’re doing such a good job.” And I was like, “Oh, wow. Thank you.” It was this first time I felt that acknowledgement—of seeing me—like someone saw me because they saw my art.
VG: What led you to your decision to major in art?
Rios: So I was going to community college in California for a while, not really knowing what I wanted to do, being scared to commit to an art major a little bit—that hesitation. But it came to this point where I was like, “I don’t really care about anything else,” you know? This is the only thing that satisfies the need inside me like nothing else does, so why would I do anything else?
VG: What kind of mediums do you create with?
Rios: I’m predominantly into oil painting. I’ve been branching out with other mediums like sculpture. I really like to use clay, and I recently was working on a wire piece. But nothing is as satisfying as creating an oil painting… for me.
VG: What is your artistic style, and what inspires your aesthetic?
Rios: I’m very fantasy-based in my work. I take a lot of inspiration from mythological creatures, and the fantasy that I consume. I read a lot of fantasy books. I watch fantasy shows, and I just feel like I really enjoy just the mysticism of all of that. I kind of live in the fantasy realm, I feel like—in my normal life even.
I do a lot of, I guess I call them self portraits—but they’re not portraits of myself, they’re supposed to almost represent me in a fantastical way, like maybe through the different mythical creatures that I’m painting, or animals. I like to incorporate a lot of natural landscapes in my paintings. But I see them as self portraits.
VG: Can you tell me about a specific work of yours and the story behind it?
Rios: I have one. So it takes place in a forest setting, and there’s a creature who is depicted in this forest kind of reaching for these two glowing lanterns that are being held up by the branches of the tree, dangling down.
And I made the creature’s face morph into a star, and then he turns into a star with the points at the end of his head. And he’s bruised and he has this look of despair almost on his face…
So specifically with that piece, I was going through a very difficult time with mental health, and so I was trying to capture that feeling—that struggle—with this painting. Reaching for the light a little bit, like a desperation to be out of the darkness.
VG: Why do you make art? What does art do for you—whether it be in your own process of creating or in engaging with other artists’ work?
Rios: I feel if I’m viewing other people’s art, I’m searching for that mutual understanding—of just the horrors of being alive [that] sometimes get to you…
I’ve been searching for a representation of my pain and my struggles, and it’s really frustrating to keep coming up empty-handed because grief is really—nothing holds a candle to it. And so trying to create something that I feel like is a representation of that is difficult, and it’s something that I’m navigating right now.
I feel like what I’m searching for is that acknowledgement, an understanding. I feel like if I can take how I feel and put it into a painting, it will make more sense to myself and to other people.
VG: What is your creative process like? Where does your imagery and subject matter come from?
Rios: I get most of my concepts just from my head, thinking about different ways in which I could portray a feeling that I have. It all starts from that. I’ll be feeling something very strongly, and I’m like, “Oh my god. I need to deal with this.” Like, “How can I paint this so that I can understand it?”
And then I’m constantly looking outward for inspiration. For example, the lanterns that I was talking about in one of my pieces—I saw those. I was at a bar and I saw them, and I thought, “Those are beautiful.” And I took a picture because I was like, “Those would be really cool to incorporate in one of my pieces…”
Or a lot of animals, too. I’m just really inspired by natural, organic forms and nature. I’ll be out hiking, and I’ll take a picture of a certain view, like, “Oh, that would be a really cool backdrop for whatever craziness I have in my mind right now.”
VG: Let’s talk about how your identity has influenced the themes in your work. Is there any aspect about who you are as a person that has shaped your art?
Rios: Totally. I think my identity in being a woman ties in a lot to my work… I think that some of the mental health struggles that I go through are because I’m a woman… Or because I have that experience in society and the pressures that are placed onto me just inherently from existing.
I am Irish and Colombian. That is my background, but I was born in the [United] States. I feel like I’m very connected to the cultural history of both of those places. I’ve looked a lot into my ancestry and lineage.
If you ever look back at your lineage, it feels so magical and almost fantastical in that same way. It gives me that same feeling of, “Oh, this is almost like something I’m not supposed to know about.”
I found—I think it was my great grandma—and I found her family in the census form, and it said “Man in the house” and then it was the father, and then it said “Other” and it listed the wife and all the children. Seeing stuff like that—it feels like fantasy. It gives you that same surrealist feeling. It’s just so weird that there was a point in time when that’s how it was—just other. I’m just other.
VG: Do you have any advice for young artists or for students interested in studying art?
Rios: Don’t be afraid to make really bad art. Not everything you make has to be a masterpiece. Because the masterpieces are few and far between. The process of making bad art is really part of the whole thing, because you’re letting yourself have that freedom.
If you keep your boundaries so tight, with, “Oh, this needs to be perfect,” [then] you’re limiting yourself a lot. And then you’re not exploring all the things that you could be exploring. It’s also supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be an outlet for you.
VG: What project are you working on right now?
Rios: I’m actually writing a story that I want to incorporate into my BFA project. It’s a fantasy-based story, of course. That’s what I do. But it’s influenced and inspired by real life events. I want to illustrate some specific moments in my story—with [a] giant, large-scale canvas to go along with it.
VG: What are your plans after graduation?
Rios: Once I graduate, I’m just going to rejoice in my graduation before I really make any solid plans. I do have a couple of ideas of what I would like to do. I’m really into the idea of art therapy… I think that it can be so cathartic and so underutilized for people. I think there’s a big stigma around [you needing] to be an artist to create art and to reap the benefits of creating art. And I just don’t think that’s true at all.
VG: Who do you make art for?
Rios: For my audience. I want for other people the same thing that I want for myself. I’m really hoping that I get some kind of emotional reaction from people, because I put so much of my emotions into the painting.
Everyone’s going to take in art in different ways, and they’re going to smoosh it to make sense for their own lives. I love that, because I think that what I put into it is not what everyone’s going to see, but people see what they need. And I think that’s so amazing. That’s my goal. If I’ve done that, I’m happy.
