Zulia Gotay de Anderson

 

Originally from Ponce, Puerto Rico, she has been a creative spirit from a young age. As a child, she instinctively turned to sculpture, crafting figurative forms from any material within reach — wood, papier-mâché, clay, and wire. In high school, her artistic sensibilities were awakened further by the iconic serigraphs of the Puerto Rican Art Institute, which she began to collect and study with reverence.

She earned her B.A. from Sacred Heart College with a minor in art, where she studied under the legendary Puerto Rican graphic artist Myrna Báez. As the top student in Báez’s class, she was deeply influenced by Myrna’s figurative approach — a sensibility that would become central to her own work. During her college years, she also discovered and was shaped by the expressive force of Gauguin, the color brilliance of Matisse, and the structural poetry of Cézanne.

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After relocating to the United States, she continued her studies at Metropolitan State College in Denver, Colorado, before settling in New Mexico to complete her M.A. in Art Education at the University of New Mexico. It was there — in the layered cultural and artistic landscapes of Taos and Santa Fe — that her creative voice deepened. The earth tones, mesa silhouettes, and luminous sky of New Mexico often appear in the backgrounds of her figurative paintings. She was especially inspired by the work of local painters such as Bill Rane, R.C. Gorman, and Angus Noel MacDonald — their lines, colors, and emotional textures shaped her evolving style.

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For many years, she was based in Corpus Christi, Texas, while traveling and exhibiting across the United States. Her exhibitions have included both two-dimensional works and three-dimensional explorations: ceramics, paper-mâché assemblages, wire sculptures, and mixed-media retablos, sometimes created inside cigar boxes. These sculptural pieces become tactile rituals — a way of reconnecting to form through touch, which in turn enlivens her painted works.

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She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona, where the Sonoran desert landscape, diverse cultural presence, and dynamic art community continue to inspire her practice.