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Ruth Leonela Buentello
Ruth Leonela Buentello a visual artist and arts educator, whose practice is rooted in painting and often bridges with other disciplines, including community/public arts and collaborative installations. Her work centers on representations of Xicana/o working-class communities. In 2011, she earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was nominated to receive the 2017 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors grant. In 2019, her work was selected in the Outwin Boochever National Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. She has served as an artist-in-residence at the Joan Mitchell Center and at the Institute of Humanities University of Michigan, where she had her first solo exhibition. Her most recent work is currently exhibiting work at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. Ruth is currently an elementary art teacher in San Antonio’s southside
MORE ABOUT THIS ARTIST
Artist Style: Teaching Artist/Instructor: Instruction for Adults, Instruction for Children; Visual Art: Collage, Contemporary, Environmental, Narrative/Historical, Nature/Wildlife, Photo Realistic, Photo-Based Painting, Portraiture, Social Commentary
Artist Medium: Acrylic; Collage; Colored Pencil; Computer; Drawing Media; Fiber/Fabric; Watercolor; Wood
Artist Statement of Work
Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):
Ruth Leonela Buentello’s work is intimate and urgent, conveying deeply personal reflections about family, community, and place.
The artist explores her cultural identity as a Xicana and a descendent of Mexican immigrants within the United States, contextualized within an increasingly tense present day. Buentello’s paintings and constructions reference images from family albums and memories.
Her compositions often incorporate hand- made elements, emphasizing the integrity of labor through their physicality, and directness. Each brushstroke, stitch, or cutout in succes- sion amounts to a covert revolution. Buentello incorporates traditional themes and methods of narrative painting as a means of overturning them, crafting spaces for Xicana narratives in the annals of art history without the imposed frame of a Euro/Western white perspective or trope of the male protagonist.
Culturally Specific Art Category
Select Culturally Specific Art Category:: Hispanic or Latino/a/x