Bio

Adrian Delgado was born on January 9, 1985, to Mexican immigrant parents and raised in the suburbs of South San Francisco, California. As the middle child with an older brother and a younger sister, he grew up watching his parents work to build a stable life, but he didn’t fully recognize the magnitude of their sacrifices until college. There, he confronted both his own privilege and the absence of people from backgrounds like his in the art world. He also saw firsthand the subtle and overt biases against making work rooted in cultural identity. This awakening revealed the disparity between opportunity and access and deepened his understanding of how labor, struggle, and opportunity shape identity. It became central to the purpose of his work.

Delgado credits his wife with profoundly expanding his perspective. Her influence helped him see both his own privilege and his community with sharper clarity, grounding his practice in a deeper sense of responsibility and purpose. Through her experiences and insight, he developed a richer understanding of the histories, aesthetics, and cultural frameworks connected to his own community—elements he had not been exposed to in traditional art school settings.

Delgado earned his BFA from California College of the Arts in 2014 with honors in Painting. He now lives in Richmond, California, with his wife and two daughters, where he paints from his home studio. His family remains at the center of both his life and creative evolution.

Professionally, Delgado works as a museum preparator in collections, managing access requests, installations, and artwork viewings. This behind-the-scenes position provides rare proximity to works by marginalized and underrepresented artists—artworks that, despite their power and importance, often never make it to public display. This experience has strengthened his commitment to increasing visibility, representation, and equity within institutional art spaces.

Since 2011, Delgado has exhibited nationally across the United States, including notable presentations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Austin, and Albuquerque. His recent exhibitions include “Right Here Right Now” at the Richmond Art Center, “Son de Alla y Son de Aca” at South Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque, and “Art/Act: Local—All On The Table” at the David Brower Center in Berkeley. He received the CAL Arts Fellowship grant in 2021 and was nominated for the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship in 2022.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is a reflection of the people and experiences that have shaped me: the laborers, immigrants, and working-class individuals whose contributions are often overlooked. As a son of Mexican immigrants, I aim to honor those who remind me of my parents—not to romanticize hardship, but to celebrate their resilience, dignity, and quiet heroism. I see these individuals as extraordinary, capable of creating possibility from scarcity, and my works seek to immortalize their lives and labor.

Becoming a father has brought my practice full circle. Through my daughters, I have relearned how to notice the small wonders of the world—gumball machines, food carts, buses, construction cranes, and sidewalk plants. These ordinary moments, seen through their eyes, become extraordinary. This perspective allows me to reflect not only on the past but also on the kind of parent I want to be and the world I hope my children will inherit.

I often depict my subjects turned away from the viewer, a deliberate choice to reflect how society frequently ignores them. This posture allows them to rest and exist with dignity while inviting the viewer to confront their own privilege. My paintings are intended to help my children, and all viewers, see the humanity, beauty, and value in those who are too often overlooked.

My process is intentional and transformative. Many surfaces are built from discarded museum crate wood, embracing a Rasquache sensibility of making the most from what is available. Oil paint is applied in expressive, layered textures, grounded in earth tones and punctuated with bright focal points that mirror the tension between struggle and hope.

Ultimately, my works are about honoring lives, acknowledging privilege, and helping viewers pause to recognize the extraordinary humanity in the people who remind me of my parents. They are a bridge between generations, a way to preserve the dignity of the past while inspiring curiosity, empathy, and awareness for the future.