Bio
Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez is an award-winning visual artist and long-term resident of Richmond, CA.
Her interest in the visual arts began early, at a magnet school for the arts and the Art Students League of San Juan. She earned a BFA at the University of Puerto Rico, where she studied printmaking and painted murals. Rebeca came to the Bay Area to pursue a graduate degree in fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute, but instead studied graphic design at the Academy of Art. After a ten-year hiatus, she returned to art as a full-time working artist.
While Rebeca’s painting is best-known through her public art and her portraits of undocumented immigrants, her landscapes of the East Bay have earned awards and are part of many private collections. She shows her work locally.
Her 2018 solo show featured portraits of post-Maria Puerto Ricans, completed during a six-week trip to the island and financed via a Kickstarter campaign. She is currently working on a portrait series of Richmond activists.
Rebeca’s murals can be found all around Richmond, where she has painted with local youth in collaboration with several non-profits. Some have social justice themes, others respond to the needs of the community. She has been commissioned by the Friends of the Richmond Greenway, the Richmond Police Activities League, the Watershed Project, and the East Bay Community Foundation.
Rebeca just completed a mural commissioned by Blue Shield for the Richmond Art Center. We Found Joy in Art-Making can be seen at her 2022 exhibition at the Richmond Art Center, Feels Like Home, featuring some of her most recent landscapes and portraits.
Rebeca García-González es una artista residente de Richmond que ha sido reconocida con varios premios. Su interés en las artes plásticas comenzó temprano a través de la Liga de Estudiantes de Arte de San Juan. Terminó su bachillerato en Artes Plásticas en la Universidad de Puerto Rico, donde dio sus primeros pasos como muralista y estudió grabado.
García-González se trasladó al área de la bahía y estudió diseño gráfico en la Academia de Arte en San Francisco.
Aunque a García-González’s es más conocida por sus murales y sus retratos de inmigrantes indocumentados, sus paisajes han ganado premios y son partes de muchas colecciones privadas. Su exhibición del 2018 estuvo dedicada a retratos de puertorriqueños afectados por el huracán María. Los retratos fueron pintados durante un corto viaje a la isla, financiado a través de una campaña Kickstarter. Actualmente se encuentra trabajando en una serie de retratos de activistas de Richmond.
Cuenta con la ayuda de jóvenes de la ciudad para pintar sus murales, pues colabora con organizaciones locales como Friends of the Richmond Greenway, Police Activities League, Watershed Project, and East Bay Community Foundation. Sus murales tienen temas de justicia social, o responden a necesidades de la comunidad y se pueden encontrar a través de nuestra ciudad.