The language of paint is a vocabulary of intimacy: touch, attention, accumulation, compromise, repair. I have faith in painting as a tool for naming the places where language and other structures fail.

Agnes Walden

About the Artist

agnes-walden

Agnes Walden (b. 1994) is a Brooklyn, New York-based painter concerned with queer and trans subjectivities. Agnes paints in a restricted yet vibrant palette, allowing large swaths of jewel-toned paint to shine through layers of dark scumbling and shadowy glazing. Short staccato brushstrokes offer a visual articulation of the act of seeing, each mark evidence of attention and reverence. Her paintings are a record of mutual understanding between the artist and the sitter, a resonant moment of connection and acknowledgment experienced by two trans people. Through her intimate paintings, Agnes explores the limitations and potentialities of representation in portraiture.

News and Notables
  • Exhibited at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum faculty exhibit, 2021

  • The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant recipient, 2020

  • Solo exhibition, favors, at An Sylvia Exhibitions, 2020