Statement

My paintings and installations map physical locations and psychological spaces. Collage, drawing, painting, printing, and cutting paper have become my methods for navigating the blurry terrain of memory and imagination. An ongoing concern is how to push the language of abstraction in order to create a visceral sense of movement through space and an emotional impact. I am interested in exploring the tension between chaos and imposed order, the concrete and the imaginary, the known and unknown.

Biography

Val Britton creates immersive, collaged works on paper and site-specific installations that explore physical and psychological spaces. Her fragmented, exploded landscapes draw on the language of maps to explore memory, history, and the possibilities of abstraction. Britton’s work is part of numerous collections, including Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; The Cleveland Clinic Fine Art Collection, Cleveland, Ohio; de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, California; Facebook Headquarters, Menlo Park, California; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York; New-York Historical Society, New York; New York Public Library; and the San Jose Museum of Art. Britton is the recipient of many grants, fellowships, and residencies including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and a Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship. Born in Livingston, New Jersey, Britton spent 14 years in San Francisco before relocating to the Pacific Northwest, where she now lives and works. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from California College of the Arts.