OXNARD, CALIFORNIA.- A Prayer For the Earth: paintings & installation by Linda Vallejo unites landscape paintings with assemblage to explore the irreconcilable visions of nature as tranquil beauty, and, nature as the devastated victim of humanity. Over the past 25 years Linda Vallejo has created images that define humanity’s fundamental, yet tenuous relationship to the natural world. A Prayer of the Earth is a political, ecological and spiritual work linking the beauty of nature with its loss. This new installation creates a complete environment with paintings of earthly beauty, sculpture of humanity’s metamorphic relationship to nature, and a central core of manipulated photographs of tragic destruction surrounded by the hope of the four elements of Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Leah Ollman of the Los Angeles Times has observed, “For Vallejo, a Los Angeles native with a deep interest in the function of ceremony, these works serve perhaps, as acts of prayer. For the viewer, they are at the least a soothing poultice.”

Born in California, Linda Vallejo has traveled extensively studying painting, printmaking and art history. She studied lithography at the University of Madrid, Spain, and received her MFA in Printmaking from California State University Long Beach. Her work has been exhibited at: SPARC in Los Angeles, Armand Hammer Museum, Laguna Art Museum, The Bronx Museum, Museum of Modern Art New York, San Antonio Museum and the Santa Monica Museum. She has been a guest lecturer and instructor at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Fresno Art Museum, California State University Long Beach, Santa Monica City College and the University of California at Irvine. Vallejo's art has been chosen to appear in the 2005 Florence Biennale.