“Mira and her weird colors,” a mentor once remarked during a critique. I recognized it immediately as accurate.
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I am an abstract painter working primarily through color, engaging with and extending the language of color-field painting. I am drawn to hues that resist naming — tones that exist between identities and evade fixed description. My interest in chromatic nuance is not decorative but structural. Through shifts in tone, proportion, and interval, I look for the moment when a painting begins to cohere as its own internal reality.
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My work is built from elemental means: gesture, restrained composition, subtle chromatic relationships, and often a limited palette. Even when geometry appears, my lines remain visibly human — never mechanical — preserving the presence of the hand.
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Unconventional formats extend the pictorial field beyond standard proportions, allowing color to function both as surface and atmosphere. These decisions slow perception and invite a more physical relationship between the viewer and the work.
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I see painting as a counterpoint to a visual culture dominated by speed, spectacle, and digital perfection. Rather than producing images that demand instant impact, I am interested in works that reveal themselves through sustained looking.
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The pursuit of beauty — an unfashionable word, perhaps — remains central to my work, not as ornament but as necessity. A successful painting, for me, is one that becomes a place: somewhere the eye wants to enter and remain, where something feels resolved.
bio
​​​​​​Mira Valencia (also known as Mira Fernandez Valencia) is an Argentine-born abstract painter based in New York whose work engages the lineage of Color Field painting. Her practice reflects more than two decades of sustained engagement with abstraction and a continued focus on chromatic structure and perceptual experience.
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Since 2015, she has studied at The Art Students League of New York, where mentorship with established abstract painters has reinforced her commitment to aesthetic judgment, chromatic rigor, and the discipline of painting.
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Having lived and worked across six countries, Valencia’s visual sensibility has been shaped by experiences of cultural displacement and adaptation. Her abstract language began to crystallize during her years in Central America, where she was selected for national and regional biennials. These formative experiences established her commitment to painting as a contemplative practice grounded in perception rather than spectacle.
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Her work is characterized by a refined sensitivity to color relationships, subtle tonal shifts, and unconventional formats that emphasize spatial tension and chromatic balance. Through restraint and structure, her paintings explore how color can function simultaneously as atmosphere, structure, and emotional presence.
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Valencia currently lives and works in New York City.
selected exhibitions
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2025 Mola, arte sin fronteras (Mola, art without borders) Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Bogotá, Colombia
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2025 Abstraction Group Show, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery (Awarded by Jury Honorary Mention) New York, NY, USA
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2025 Abstraction Group Show, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery (Awarded by Jury Honorary Mention) New York, NY, USA
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2024 Abstraction Group Show, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery (Awarded by Jury Honorary Mention) New York, NY, USA
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2023 Abstraction Group Show, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, New York, NY, USA
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2018 Búsquedas en la abstracción, Fantoni Galleria, Mar del Plata, Argentina
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2014 Mola-Maps, Arte Consult Gallery, Panama City, Panama
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2013 National Contest for Painting (Awarded with Certificate of honor), Panama
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2013 Fundación Calicanto, Exhibition & Auction, Panama City, Panama
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2013 Self-portraits, Diablo Rosso Gallery, Panama City, Panama
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2011 00-10: Progressive Account Art in the First Decade of XXI Century in Panama, Museum of Contemporary Art, Panama City, Panama
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2006 Human Heritage in the X International Festival of Arts, Urban Art, La Sabana, San José, Costa Rica
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2006 Human Heritage Public Spaces Intervention at Casco Antiguo, Panama City, Panama
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2005 Panama Art Biennal (7th Edition), Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), Panama City, Panama
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2005 Photo-September, Seven photographers, Arte Consult Gallery, Panama City, Panama
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2005 DIVERgencias/CONVERgencias, Selected Artists, Amador Gallery / National University, Panama
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2005 Montblac Young Artists World Patronage, Selected in Panama for 2005 World Contest, Hamburg, Germany
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2004 Director’s choice, Mateo Sariel Gallery, Panama City, Panama
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2004 Central America Biennal of Visual Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), Panama City, Panama
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2004 Expo Trastienda, Art Fair Recoleta Cultural Center and Borges Cultural Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina
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2004 Intervened Ready-made dolls, Nuevo Espacio Arte Contemporáneo, Panama City, Panama
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2004 Voices for pain: Art and the Holocaust, Panama Canal Museum, Panama City, Panama
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2003 HabitArt Eight artists intervening an old house (Awarded for the Best Intervention), Panama City, Panama
2002 Panama Art Biennal (6th Edition) Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), Panama City, Panama
collections
Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama (MAC), Panama
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National Brewery Company (Cervecería Nacional - Saab Miller), Panama
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Fundación Fernández Pirla, Panama
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Alexandra Arias – Mateo Sariel, Panama
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Scott Mahler, Sarasota, Florida, USA
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Clarin Mustad, Lausanne, Switzerland
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Ariana Arias, Panama City, Panama
awards
2025 Abstraction Group Show, Jury Honorary Mention, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery New York, NY, USA
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2025 Abstraction Group Show, Jury Honorary Mention, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery New York, NY, USA
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2024 Abstraction Group Show, Jury Honorary Mention, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery New York, NY, USA
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2013 National Contest for Painting, Certificate of honor, Panama, Republic of Panama
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2004 Central America Biennial of Visual Arts, Certificate for best artist, Museum of Contemporary Art, Panama City, Panama
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2003 HabitArt- Eight artists intervening an old house, Awarded for the Best Intervention, Panama City, Panama
press
2025 Mola, Arte sin Fronteras Video #1, Video #2, Video #3 ​​
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2013 Molas y mapas se fusionan read more
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​2013 Serie de molas geográficas read more​
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2013 Los colores de las emociones de Mira read more​​