Anna Dell Luzuriaga, native Houstonian, is an emerging portrait artist, photographer, and poet. Deeply connected to the local community, while Anna also has an extensive list of travels and experiences that have broadened and informed her core beliefs of balance. After graduating University of Texas at Austin, earning B.S. in Corporate Communications in 1999, and then attending massage school in Oregon and California schools in 2001, she made understanding people a very personal level part of her healing practice.
Anna lived in on her own in Central America for three years using the time to get to know herself, and explore the meaning of life, and enrich her spirit in the natural environment of the jungle and around her. These experiences led her to view the world and its inhabitants holistically. This worldview is evident in her art and creativity.
Anna has always worked with her hands and heart in tandem--from physical touch therapies to art. Empathy informs this union of hands and heart.
Since 2019, Anna has been enrolled in classes at the Glassell School of Art at MFAH, where she found her commitment to artwork that allows others to see the inner stories of every human experience. She has used her poetry to push through and expand these stories with an authentic rhythm and flow. Her poems sometimes allude to or develop into her visual portraits of these poignant human experiences.
The portraits start with an aleatory use of acrylic paint that allows the abstract stories to reveal themselves. Anna adds mixed media collage to heighten the mood and layer emotional dimensions of the piece. She uses newsprint, paper, fabric, and various embellishments to multiply the viewers’ sense the complexities radiating from her subjects.
Anna’s commitments of hand and heart in empathy and creativity inform her community activism. As as single parent, she has been a fierce advocate for public school teachers and students, using her voice to address injustices in our current tattered system. In addition, Anna actively participates in organizing around and protesting for social justice. Because Anna fervently promotes progressive change, this is a main theme of her current body of work. Anna views her art, therapy, and activism as helping people to learn from the inner stories she tells. Understanding is a path to healing together.
