Jodie Herrera is a Northern New Mexican painter with Latina, Apache and Comanche ancestry. She works as a Realist Oil Painter, Muralist, Illustrator, Mixed-Media Artist and Curator.
Herrera has been an artist all of her life and formally started painting in 2011. Even as a little girl, she was known as “the artist" to those in her community. In fact, her first memories are of creating art, and with the encouragement of her mother (full time jeweler and potter) and father, she has followed her path unwaveringly.
Herrera’s full body of work is an homage to the sacred feminine and is created to serve and acknowledge the beauty and resilience of all women. She hopes to bring awareness to the many facets of the female experience while also uplifting women and providing a platform for important issues around intersectional feminism. She hopes her work can be a catalyst for positive change.
Herrera is currently working on two art projects outside of murals, all other art related commissions and freelance. One is Women Across Borders, an International Arts and Activism project, in which Herrera travels internationally. She specifically works with refugee and immigrant women and creates paintings that illustrate their personal journeys. She provides monetary and emotional support for all her participants and hopes to bring attention the issues they face and have overcome, as well as to educate and activate others around the subject.
Herrera also works locally on her main project, where she creates oil paintings of semi-photorealistic figurative works portraying women that are going through, or have persevered through trauma. Addiction, abuse and cancer are but some of these traumas. Herrera takes great care with each story, building personal and supportive relationship with each of her participants. Herrera then narrates their experiences within her paintings, with the hopes to give back a source power that may have once been taken from her subjects. She strives to serve and celebrate the beauty and resilience of all women with the intent that they may provide a source of inspiration for others.
Herrera received her BFA with honors from the University of New Mexico in 2013, with a focus in oil painting. She currently resides in Albuquerque, where she works as a professional artist and curator.
Herrera was awarded “Best Visual Artist of 2017” by Albuquerque The Magazine, and her art has been featured in such settings as The Art and History Museum of Santa Cruz, The Albuquerque Art and History Museum, The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Arts, 516 Gallery, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe, among many others.
