About Me

Valerie Ostenak's whole life has been about art and design.

As a multidisciplinary artist, Valerie is currently focused on painting. An abstract painter and colorist, her atmospheric style is primarily defined by deep tones and highlights, sometimes heavily textured, and always accented with gold or silver leaf. The metal leaf creating another ethereal layer in low ambient light. Valerie's have been featured in public art programs including New Mexico Art in Public Places Program and Rockefeller Center’s Flag Project in conjunction with the Climate Museum. Her work was invited to the XV Florence Biennale, has been featured by National Geographic, and collected by the University of New Mexico Hospital and Navajo Technical University.

Ostenak's metalsmithing career spans almost three decades creating sculptural art jewelry, forged furnishings, and wall works for private collectors and interior designers. Her accolades include the Saul Bell Design Award, the Centurion Emerging Designer Award, and the Halstead Jewelry Design & Business Development Grant. She has exhibited multiple years at both SOFA Chicago and internationally during Milan Fashion Week. Her work has been published widely—in Vogue UK, Harper’s Bazaar, The World of Interiors, Tatler, Marie Claire, and in over a dozen books on contemporary art jewelry and blacksmithing. She has taught at universities and associations across the U.S. and completed artist residencies in the UK and Italy.

Ostenak had a professional designer career as a graphic designer, specializing in publication design and production. She worked in the aerospace industry, as well as for book publishers, a newspaper, and individual authors. The graphic design career, meshed with her expertise as a sculptor, led her to working as a kitchen & bath designer and interior stylist for individuals and the real estate industry.

For Valerie, styling an interior for someone is as important as creating a work of art for them. Living within consciously and personally designed space can transform one’s spirit and soothe the soul.

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Along with Art & Design . . .

• I love motorcycles—rode for 25 years—I still lean into a curve in my SUV • swimming is my favorite meditation • delving into nutritional chemistry can become a rabbit-hole • I'm a voracious reader, and I fiercely love my family.

As an intuitive artist, my paintings are emotional recordings—internal conversations that help me find the Light within the Darkness. Through color, texture, and movement, painting reveals the hidden within me. Inspired by the shifting nature of water, the vastness of the cosmos, the steadfast growth of trees, and the colors of flowers, my work explores transformation in all its forms—physical, emotional, and spiritual. Vines turning rubble into beauty, rivers carving canyons, and dandelions coming up through the asphalt remind me that change is both gentle and powerful. My hope is that viewers pause, reflect, and recognize their own inner strength and light.

Tolstoy believed that art is not truly art unless it carries emotion, and I feel this deeply. Like Jung, I believe that acknowledging our shadow leads us toward wholeness, painting helps me explore that balance between Darkness and the Light. Stevenson wrote that the true purpose of life is to become what we are capable of becoming. Through painting, I engage with that journey—finding strength, hope, and possibility in the continual dialogue between Shadow and Light.