Location: Oakland, CA
Medium: Painting, drawing, photography
Website: bcolleen.com
B Colleen is a multidisciplinary artist born in San Diego and now based in Oakland, California. They earned a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art, with an emphasis in painting, from San Francisco State University. Since graduating, B Colleen has built a steady exhibition presence across the Bay Area, showing work at Root Division, Martin Wong Gallery, Photoworks, Santa Cruz Art League, and the San Francisco Art Fair, and has taken on curatorial and jurying roles for organizations including Root Division, NIAD Art Center, and apexart.
Working as a Mexican-American artist exploring identity, gender, and belonging, B Colleen has cited lesbian artists Catherine Opie and Zoe Leonard as formative influences, describing their work as validating during a period of self-discovery around butch identity. In 2024, B Colleen presented the solo exhibition “What will soothe you?” at Martin Wong Gallery in San Francisco, alongside a run of group shows at the same gallery, at Root Division, and in the SFSU Fine Arts Gallery’s annual Stillwell exhibitions.
Beyond exhibiting, B Colleen works as an artist and educator, continuing to develop a practice centered on daydream imagery, ritual, and healing symbolism drawn from personal biography.
B Colleen’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing (oil and chalk pastel, gouache, India ink), and photo-based processes, at times extending into small-scale installation and performance-for-video. The work moves between color abstraction and figuration, using portraiture and self-portraiture – with particular attention to eyes and hands – to explore multiplicity within butch identity and its shifting relationship to masculinity and femininity.
Recurring motifs, especially lavender, function as personal symbols of healing within otherwise overstimulated compositions. B Colleen has described the work as depicting “daydreams that act as spaces for both escape and reflection,” framing the practice as a meditative search for being and belonging rooted in gratitude and mindfulness. Bilingual titles (Con Amor, Lágrimas de Oro, Siempre Somos Juntos) reflect the artist’s Mexican-American background and thread through the dreamlike, intimate tone of the work.
This entry was written by the Bay Area Artist Wiki project and is based on publicly available information.
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