About
Valeria Cesario
Born in Brazil and educated in the UK, Valeria Cesario is a self-taught artist whose work bridges the classic and the contemporary. Heavily influenced by modern European art, her practice balances a love for the principles of design with an exploration of luminous ornamentation and pattern.
She was about eight when she first saw a full collection of coloured pencils, at a neighbour’s house, and knew in that moment that she would become an artist. She comes from a large family of twelve siblings, and in the 1970s studying art in a big city was out of reach.
In 2000 she was living on the outskirts of London, and there she found some of the greatest libraries in the world. From her first day in the British Library she read her way through the painters – Sargent, Van Gogh, Matisse, Degas, Odilon Redon, Adrian Hill – beginning with A Handbook for Painters and Art Students, published in 1885, and went on to study how they worked, the psychology of art teaching, and children’s emotions.
Valeria is now based in Bedfordshire, England.
“Education cannot create genius or talent, but it must help develop what is already there.”
The work
Her work slowly invites the viewer into the pure pleasure of seeing repeated patterns and the organic elements of her own “little garden.” Through this deliberate repetition, Cesario seeks to recreate a timeless element—establishing a unique structure, visual rhythm, and conceptual meaning.
Teaching
Valeria went back to a small town in her home country to teach art as a volunteer in its state schools. Working with the recycled materials the schools had to hand, she gave classes to more than 350 children over three months. The work is voluntary, and she has never stopped.
“The teacher was amazed because she saw a quiet room. I was amazed because I saw a room full of architects, pilots, and poets who had simply been waiting for someone to ask them what they wanted to see through those windows.”
She tells the story of those classes, with a gallery of the children’s drawings and paintings, in her book The Generosity of the Spirit: Art Lessons from Children.